


In The Silence

by ScopesMonkey



Series: Sugarverse [47]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Action, Canon Typical Violence, Crime, Established Relationship, Injured Sherlock, M/M, Mention of Past Sexual Assault, Murder Mystery, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 16:54:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1435801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScopesMonkey/pseuds/ScopesMonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having deciphered a coded message left at several crime scenes, Sherlock attempts to track the elusive killer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In chapter 6, there's a discussion of a past sexual assault (of an OC). Just so you know. It's not especially graphic, I think, but more so than the last story in which it was mentioned.

John had found Sherlock staring at the mirror shortly after three that morning, having drifted awake enough to realize there was an empty and cold space beside him. He'd almost gone back to sleep, because this wasn't abnormal, but he'd remembered then that Sherlock was supposed to be sleeping off the effects of two days of not properly caring for his recently concussed self.

The lack of sound in the flat had startled John into getting up quickly, ignoring the dizzy, groggy feeling that came with rising with too little sleep. He hurried into the living room to find Sherlock there, staring at the mirror, a stunned expression on his face.

But when his grey eyes slid to meet John's brown ones, John felt cold in a way that had nothing to do with the early hour or the lack of sleep.

Sherlock's eyes were gleaming.

John looked away then, at the mirror, and saw the message Sherlock had translated, scrawled across the glass.

_Is anyone listening?_

It made goose bumps jump up on his arms and the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

Sherlock was looking at him then, in the silence, that triumphant expression still in his eyes, and John wondered how long it had been since he'd decoded the message, how long he'd been contemplating it.

Then he wondered how bloody fast they could catch this killer and get him off the streets before Sherlock started enjoying the fact that he had another dangerous adversary.

Probably too late for that.

But now there was noise, the babble of voices in Lestrade's office, the volume too high for the small space, threatening to break out of the constraints. John had no idea why there were so many people in the office – they seemed to have attached themselves to the case somehow, fulfilling functions he didn't understand, but, by the looks of it, Lestrade didn't necessarily understand, either. The DI looked harassed – a normal expression he wore when Sherlock was around – and tired and more than a little aggravated. Donovan was there, which made sense, but also Anderson, which didn't, and other people John didn't know, officers and detectives, all of them who seemed to be talking at cross-purposes, above one another.

In the midst of this, Sherlock sat facing Lestrade's desk, in a tiny patch of silence that he cultivated for himself. He was in his black coat and purple scarf, sitting with his legs crossed, shoes immaculately polished as always, watching the DI with a level, removed expression.

Gone was the triumph John had seen earlier, that dangerous glimmer in his eyes, that expression of appreciation that made John worry, because he'd seen Sherlock sport it when dealing with Moriarty.

To Sherlock, this was not just interesting. It was _fascinating_.

And fun.

_But now_ , John thought, _now, no, he doesn't look like that_. He looked impatient and mildly annoyed at the babble around him.

"How is it that the lunatics always find you?" Anderson demanded and John repressed a sigh – he hadn't been hoping that a run in could be avoided, because he was more of a realist than that. He just wondered what the fascination was with the constant antagonism. It was as though it was a source of energy for both men, like sunlight for solar cells. As though, if they went too long without it, they'd power down and cease functioning on some level.

Sherlock shifted his cool grey eyes from Lestrade to Anderson, narrowing them somewhat. He delayed answering, which irked the forensics officer, and John saw Donovan cross her arms and scowl. Probably at both of them, John thought.

"Tell me something," Sherlock enquired smoothly, his voice as cool as his eyes, which John classified as Not Good.

"What?" Anderson snarled.

"Do you have to write yourself detailed notes to remind yourself to breathe? Is this why your brain cannot function on higher levels?"

Anderson stared at him and John was certain, _absolutely certain_ , that Donovan repressed a snort of laughter hard, visible only as a small shift in her stance and a quick glance away, then back.

"The message said 'is _anyone_ listening?'" Sherlock continued before Anderson could retort. "Not 'are _you_ listening?' It was clearly not meant for me specifically, but for whoever could interpret it. Which so happens to be me."

"So you think like a madman," Anderson growled.

"Our killer thinks like a madman, a psychopath," Sherlock corrected, cocking an eyebrow, but his expression was not entirely condescending, there was anger in there as well. " _I_ think like a genius. Although I appreciate that this distinction is lost to you."

Anderson curled his lip but Lestrade jumped in.

"Shut up, the pair of you," he said. "And everyone else, just shut up. This isn't getting us anywhere. We still don't know who he is or where he's picking up his victims. We barely know what he wants, except for someone to listen to him."

The rest of the voices stilled at the DI's insistence, but Sherlock and Anderson continued to glare at each other. Donovan exchanged a look with John that was laced with years of experience dealing with both of them, although John suspected now she'd had her fill of Anderson. She was keeping herself away from the forensics officer, and hadn't even called Sherlock "freak", which, admittedly, she didn't do around John anymore, because he'd snapped at her once about it. She seemed weary and tired, and not in a way that had much to do with lack of sleeping or being roused very early in the morning.

"Well, we know the question, let's give him an answer," Anderson snapped.

Sherlock's expression shuttered and his eyes flared and John repressed a groan.

"And then what?" he demanded in an icy voice before Lestrade could intervene again. "Shall we say yes and have him reply? What would he say in return? 'Oh, lovely, such a pleasure to meet you'? Which would require eight more pairs of murders on his part, I might add. _Anything_ we say to him could be met by a response in his very particular way. Is that what you want?" At this, Sherlock glanced about the whole room, meeting other eyes pointedly.

John was somewhat surprised, although he disliked having to admit that. Sherlock was actually considering the possibility of more victims above possibility of continuing the game?

But that wasn't entirely fair, was it? He'd gone after that cabbie the very first case he'd worked with John, to prevent the man from hurting anyone else.

And, John realized, the game had already been played, the puzzle solved. Any more messages after this, Sherlock would be able to decipher easily, unless the killer changed the pattern, which John thought was unlikely.

The game now would be finding him while avoiding any more murders.

"Or perhaps you think if we let him know someone _is_ listening, he'll simply turn himself in?" Sherlock enquired.

_Wouldn't that be brilliant?_ John thought. It would be nice if they could announce at a press conference that they'd received the message, and yes, they were listening, and the man would simply show up at the Yard and surrender.

Without leaving another trail of bodies behind him.

_Not bloody likely_ , John mused. He wondered how many more victims there were beyond these ten, how far back it stretched. He suppressed a shudder; what went wrong in the formation of a person's brain to make them like this? What bit of human empathy was shut off or left out altogether that created someone who could simply shoot a stranger in the head and walk away?

It made the doctor in him enraged and the rest of him just cold.

"Wouldn't be much fun for you, would it?" Anderson snapped and John bit down on a groan; he chose _now_ to become perceptive and start accurately judging Sherlock's reactions?

"Shut up," Lestrade snapped again, shooting an angry look at his forensics officer. "Bickering isn't going to get us anywhere. I'm not making any decisions on this without orders from above. And we haven't even worked out what his pattern is. We still need to pin that down. He's a bloody serial killer. He _wants_ us to know who he is."

John expected Sherlock to object to this, but he didn't, and Lestrade was only echoing the words Sherlock had spoken to John about serial killers on their first case anyway.

Lestrade sighed abruptly and waved a hand.

"Right. Everyone out. Donovan, Sherlock, John, you stay. Everyone else, piss off."

There was hesitation and Lestrade smacked an open-palmed hand on his desk, giving a glare round the small room for good measure.

"Well? Are you waiting for an engraved invitation? Go!"

With a degree of unhappy muttering and not a few dark looks cast at Sherlock, who ignored them with unusual stony silence, the rest of the officers filtered out. Lestrade waited until they left, then waved a hand at Donovan, who shut all of the blinds on the windows quickly, moving with an efficiency that suggested she'd done this before and was well used to it.

Lestrade pressed his fists together and dropped his head against them, staying still for a moment, then looking up. John felt a stab of sympathy for the DI; it was far too early in the morning for this and he looked as though he hadn't got much sleep as it was. Donovan took a chair recently vacated by another officer, exchanging a look with Lestrade.

" _Why_ is he doing this?" the DI asked, not really addressing Sherlock, John thought, but the world in general.

"To see if someone is listening," Sherlock replied shortly.

"Yes," Lestrade said, rolling his eyes. "I rather got that from his ridiculously convoluted way of sending a message. But _why_ is he so invested in finding out if we're listening to him? He's bloody left a trail of bodies from Sheffield to London. _Of course_ we're listening to him."

"He doesn't have to have a reason," Sherlock pointed out. "He's a psychopath. He's likely doing it to see if he can."

"Not at all reassuring," Lestrade sighed. "Any luck finding anything similar, Sally?"

"No," Donovan said. "I've been checking on murders involving the victims being tied up in some way going back the last ten years and there's nothing that fits our man's pattern."

"This is the first time he's used this pattern," Sherlock snapped.

"I know," she replied coolly. "But we were hoping for _something_ that might tip us off. He had to start somewhere."

Privately, John agreed with that. Lestrade drummed his fingers on his desk, then against his lips, and Sherlock followed the movement with his eyes and it was with some shock that John realized that both other men were probably itching for a cigarette.

"Sherlock. Do you think he's a genius?"

"Just come out and say it, Lestrade. Do I think this is another Moriarty?"

John held back on a curse and saw Donovan stiffen but Lestrade only narrowed his eyes.

"We're dealing with a man who came up with the idea to use scarves binding his victims to send a coded message in shades of blue, Sherlock. This isn't normal."

"I'm not saying he isn't as smart. I'm saying he's not as connected. What kind of person sends the message 'are you listening?' the way he did? When Moriarty wanted to know if people were paying attention, he strapped bombs to his victims and actually spoke with us through them. If he really wanted to know that we were paying attention, he could have blown up half the city without much trouble. He was well connected, Lestrade, likely more so than we'll ever realize. This person, whoever he is, is working on his own. He's moving across England by himself, I've no idea why, so don't ask."

Lestrade stared at him.

"So, what, we have a lonely psychopath on our hands?"

"Yes," Sherlock said simply.

"Brilliant," the DI muttered.

"It may be why he's killing couples," Sherlock pointed out and John recalled suddenly the conversation they'd had in the pub, when Sherlock had noted the killer was targeting couples, but heterosexual couples. "It may be that he's idealizing them somehow, and killing them negates what they have and he does not."

"You think so?" Donovan asked and Sherlock glanced over at her.

"I don't know," he said in what was, for him, a conciliatory tone of voice. "Until we determine why he's choosing the victims he's choosing and where he's finding them, I can do little more than speculate."

"Comes back to that," Lestrade sighed. "Keep working on it. I'll get Sam to check up for similar cases in the rest of the EU in the morning – _later_ in the morning, I mean. Sally, keep looking for anything that may even remotely look similar to this in the Sheffield-London corridor. Damn. Sherlock, as much as I appreciate you figuring this out, couldn't you have done it a bit later in the day?"

"Really, Lestrade, you're a DI. Lack of sleep comes with the territory."

"Oh, it's not that," Lestrade said wryly and John saw a similar type of smile tug at Donovan's lips. "It's the shit I'm going to get from calling up the brass at this time of day– night. Get back to work, Sherlock, and John, make sure he doesn't bloody kill himself by overworking with a concussion."

Sherlock huffed and John bit down on a smile at seeing his husband casually reprimanded like a disobedient child by the DI, who didn't even seem to realize he'd done it.

"Will do," John promised and saw Sherlock's expression darken again, which made him unable to keep the smile off of his lips this time.

"Come on, John," Sherlock said coldly, mustering the haughty air he assumed so well, which John knew was not at all feigned. "Apparently, I need my doctor to accompany me."

John saw Donovan grin and flashed a smile back at her, pushing himself out of his chair. He bid good morning to Lestrade, not at all envying the other man's position, because he was going to have a load of angry superior officers to contend with quite soon. He followed Sherlock out of the door, keeping up with practiced ease as the consulting detective breezed coolly through the station and back out into the chill morning air.


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock was uncharacteristically silent on the cab ride home, glaring out the window, and John wondered what it was – couldn't _just_ be Anderson and his momentary insight into Sherlock's mind, although that was probably part of it. If it had only been that, however, Sherlock would have happily railed about it, finding any number of other examples to prove how the other man was really a dullard, highlighting the most interesting ones for John, even if John knew them.

Sherlock's eyes flickered to street signs and alleyways as the passed by them, and John wondered if he were tracing routes on foot for them. Maybe they should have walked? It usually took about forty-five minutes to do so, even with Sherlock's "short-cuts" – privately, John did not consider zigzagging through a maze of alleys to be a real short-cut – and this was a tolerable amount of time when it was not a freezing early November morning.

All things considered, he was glad they were warm in the cab.

John paid the driver when they arrived at the flat, because Sherlock just got out and strode toward the front door without bothering to check for pedestrians or traffic – not that these were a big concern at this time of morning. Although a bloke on a bike with a flashing headlight swerved around John when he stepped out, startling the doctor somewhat. John shook his head and hurried after his husband who had, at least, not just let the door shut behind him, so John could step into the welcoming warmth without having to fumble for his keys.

Once inside their flat itself, John opened his mouth to ask what was bothering Sherlock, but the detective forestalled him by pulling out his phone and ringing a number. John was tempted to snatch it from him, because he was not at all certain this wasn't another call to Sam in the early hours of the morning with questions about his personal life, or perhaps a similar call to Tricia, but he was mercifully wrong.

"Lestrade? No, I have not solved the case in the fifteen minutes since I saw you. I've only just got home. Shut up a moment. I want to press charges against the man who threw the beer mug at me. Yes, I know I said I didn't before. Now I do. Can you add accessory-after-the-fact to those charges? You did say you could be creative– what? Because if it bloody well weren't for him, I wouldn't have a concussion and I'd have been able to stop the murderer before the final victims! Or at least be able to trace his blasted patterns! Yes, of course I'm serious! What do you mean, no judge would accept that? The man is keeping me from doing my job properly! No, of course I don't mean the murderer, try to keep up, will you? What? What! Bloody typical, isn't it?" He paused for a sigh, shaking his head. "Well, yes, I'm still serious. Fine, if you can't add that, but what can you do, other than assault? Yes? Yes, yes. That sounds fine. Good. Thank you."

He rung off without saying good-bye, then turned to see John staring at him.

"What?" he asked.

"Sorry," John managed. "Just unexpected, is all."

Sherlock tossed his phone lightly on the coffee table, shooting John a glare.

"My head bloody well hurts, John," he said. "And itches like mad. And I can't concentrate. How am I to be expected to do my job like this?"

"Um, you deciphered his message," John pointed out. "Which no one else even picked up on as a message."

"And how long did this take me?" Sherlock snapped. "Meanwhile, he's roaming about, probably selecting more victims for his next ridiculous message while we try and scramble to keep up after him because some complete lackwit couldn't calculate angles and trajectories properly and hit _me_ instead of his intended target."

With a huff, he threw himself into his chair. John repressed a smile, knowing it would be entirely misinterpreted; he wasn't smiling at Sherlock's injury, but Sherlock's attitude. It probably wouldn't do to say so, but this sort of petulance probably meant he was feeling more himself. John had been surprised when Sherlock had initially refused to press any charges.

Sherlock propped his feet on the coffee table and John ignored the fact that the soles were wet from a recent rain, and glared at John, still wrapped in his coat with its upturned collar and his purple scarf and leather gloves. He looked tired around the eyes, despite what were probably his best efforts to hide this.

"You know, there's a good body of medical research on the benefits of regular sleep and regular meals," John said.

"Oh, please," Sherlock snorted, pressing a gloved fist against his lips momentarily. "Do feel free to lecture me more, John. I already _know_ that. Being married to a doctor allows something to rub off, you know."

_Yeah, the knowledge, not the habits_ , John thought, his lips quirking. Sherlock gave him another glare for a good measure and John shrugged off his coat, unwinding the scarf from around his neck. It was the fourth one Sherlock had bought him, even though the other three were still in great shape. He bought one for John every year in November, and John had not worked out if the detective realized he did so on precisely the same day he'd bought the first one, three years ago. Was this important enough information to be stored in his brain? John didn't know. If it was, Sherlock was unlikely to admit to it.

He hung up his scarf and coat and turned back to his husband.

"Sherlock, you had– have, actually, a nasty concussion. Sure, it's getting better, but you're not helping by refusing to eat and sleep properly. It seems to me you need three things: a good, hot meal followed by a good long sleep."

Sherlock arched his eyebrows at him.

"That's two things, John," he said. "I know you've mastered basic counting. I'd hope they wouldn't let you become a doctor without that specialized skill. What's the third thing?"

"You need me to give you a really, really good shag."

At this, Sherlock's eyebrows twitched farther up in surprise.

"I do, do I?" he enquired.

"Well, it's been a week and a half," John said. "I'm starting to feel a bit antsy."

"I don't need the distraction, John," Sherlock replied. "You can take care of yourself, I'm sure."

"And what would you rather do?" John asked, gesturing with an open palm to the paper-disaster area that was their flat, files littering all the surfaces, the dratted scarves still on the table, the map pinned to the wall, the mirror with the killer's grim but almost self-indulgent message scrawled across the glass. "Sit out here uselessly, stewing about how you can't work and thinking about Anderson? Or come into the bedroom and have a good think about me for awhile?"

Sherlock stared and John grinned, knowing he'd hit his mark.

"How did–" Sherlock started, then clamped his lips together, refusing to ask John how he'd known Anderson's remark was eating at the detective. It annoyed Sherlock, he knew, that John had become so good at reading him. Not as good as John would like to pretend, though.

"If you were feeling so deprived, why didn't you say so before now?" Sherlock enquired coolly.

"Yeah, um, I had to make sure you wouldn't throw up on me," John replied. "I'll try a lot of things, but that really just doesn't do it for me."

Sherlock stared at him a moment longer then his lips twitched and he passed a hand over his eyes, and John considered that he'd won. A chuckle escaped his husband, probably unintentionally, because then he schooled his expression back to severe.

"I have not had any nausea in seven days, John."

"But you have had dizzy spells. Which can lead to nausea. Which can lead to vomiting."

"And how do you ensure this won't happen now?"

"I'm a doctor," John sniffed. "I can tell." He didn't bother including that he was just feeling impatient by now and wanted to get his way, which did not at all involve taking care of himself, as Sherlock put it, nor listening to the complete lack of patience Sherlock would develop for his work if he went on like this.

"It will completely ruin the order of importance you listed to me a moment ago. A hot meal then a good sleep?"

"The order can be changed," John said with a wolfish grin. "Good shag, good sleep, then hot meal."

"Oh, _all right_ ," Sherlock huffed and John laughed at the idea that his husband was actually acquiescing to something he found tedious because he knew it was not the case, he could tell by the increasing brightness in Sherlock's eyes that he was interested.

Sherlock peeled off his gloves, tossing them on the coffee table, and stood, reaching to undo his scarf.

"No, leave it," John said. "I'll take care of all of that." He gave Sherlock another wolfish grin, a glint in his eyes. "Plus, I might find some use for it."

* * *

John woke him up with a kiss, a smile, and two ibuprofen.

"Take these," he ordered in his Doctor John voice that brooked no arguments, but Sherlock seriously considered trying anyway, just to keep his hand in. It wouldn't do to have John assuming Sherlock would listen him just because he happened to be _right_ once in awhile.

That sort of encouragement could be habit forming for John. Then there would be no end to his stubbornness.

"I just ordered Chinese," John continued. "Thought we could watch some Doctor Who while we eat. And _then_ you can go back to work."

He passed off a glass of water and Sherlock downed the pills without comment, then consented to get out of bed. John fetched himself a beer, but apparently this was not on the menu for Sherlock, who wrinkled his nose at John when he came back into the living room. Disregarding this, John fished around in Sherlock's coat, which he'd returned at some point to its proper place on its hook instead of on their bedroom floor, coming up with Sherlock's wallet.

"Hey now," Sherlock protested but John ignored this as well, taking out thirty pounds and tossing the wallet back at Sherlock before clattering down the stairs to receive their just-arrived Chinese food. Sherlock scowled, putting his wallet on the coffee table, since he was clad only in his pyjamas. Apparently, John had thought to insist on him dressing for sleep after they'd shagged.

Really, he was going to have to stop letting John win so often.

It was just unbecoming. And doctors were notorious for seeing the smallest acquiescence as an open invitation dictate every aspect of their patients' lives.

Unfortunately, the food smelled good in that greasy-westernized-Chinese food way and Sherlock was hard put not to want to eat it.

After that, there was indeed no stopping John.

He put Sherlock on a strict schedule of meals, sleep, and what he called an "exercise regime", and Sherlock vaguely regretted that John's memory extended to what he, Sherlock, considered unnecessary information. Such as Sherlock mentioning to John sometime the past spring that sex was very good for the cardiovascular system.

He could hardly escape his own words, and suspected he remembered saying them, which was even worse.

Between these chores – the last one not really being a chore, but best not let John start to suspect that Sherlock was not entirely put off – Sherlock was allowed ( _allowed!_ ) to work as much as he pleased, although John put out four glasses of water on the kitchen counter every morning and expected them to be gone by the time he got home.

Sherlock drank two and retaliated by pouring the contents of the other two down the drain. He had considered watering their plants, but John would probably notice he'd done this.

He was thirty-seven, for pity's sake. Not seven.

Somehow, he could not bring himself to feel as indignant about all of this as he wished, particularly when John had left for work Wednesday morning – having called out Tuesday due to the chaos resulting from Sherlock's deciphering the message and then, of course, the shagging – he had caught Sherlock in a light kiss and reminded Sherlock that he loved him.

"Yes, John, I love you, too," Sherlock had said and John had smiled and had been out the door.

* * *

A day and a half later, Sherlock had made no progress on determining how and where the killer was selecting his victims.

It was absolutely maddening. There seemed to be no pattern, save for a general southward trend that ended in two pairs of murders in London and the fact that all of the couples were married and heterosexual.

Age, religion, ethnicity, income, it seemed to make no difference. Their fields of work didn't overlap, neither did their social circles, even the two in London. They weren't even all British; Rebecca Garrott had moved to England from Ireland after meeting her husband several years previous, and Sara Clayworth had been born and raised in New Zealand for the first eight years of her life. Sherlock checked to see if the others had lived abroad, and one or two of them had, for short periods, but the others hadn't, so there was no pattern there, either.

Had he just picked names out of an online phone directory?

Or perhaps out of a hat?

Regular updates from Lestrade were regular updates about nothing, and Sherlock tried in vain not to think about the fact that the three cases previous to the London cases had gone cold.

Shortly after lunch – which Mrs. Hudson ensured he ate and Sherlock was certain John was paying a bit more on their rent for this service – Sherlock got out his violin and tried to play, but it didn't help.

With a growl, he replaced the instrument and felt the silence in the flat pressing in on him. He closed the violin case and clicked the latches back shut and thought of the cellist he'd seen at Angelo's the previous week. Had it only been just over a week ago? He glanced about the flat, at the mirror he hadn't let John move yet, at the scarves still spread out on the table, at the map of England pinned to the wall, more of his handwriting scrawled all over it.

He needed music yes, he thought, but not his own.

Sherlock fetched his coat, scarf and gloves, ensured he had his phone in case John got it in his head to check up on him and had some sort of problem with being unable to reach him, and his wallet, and left the flat.


	3. Chapter 3

He knocked on a back door and waited a few minutes, bundling his hands in their gloves into his pockets, huffing frozen puffs of air. Sherlock glanced around; there was a security camera, but it was just for show – the red light that would indicate that it was on had long ago dimmed and gone out and never been replaced. No one cared about this particular door, since it was only used by a handful of staff on their cigarette breaks and was tucked out of the way. One of those regrettable little messy and industrial spaces every large building had.

The door eased open and Sherlock stepped inside.

"Hello, Roger. Finally quit then, have you?"

"Now, Sherlock, how could you possible tell?" the security guard said with a twitch of his lips.

"Your shoes," Sherlock said.

"My shoes, eh, young man? And what's so special about my shoes?"

"They're dry, still polished, not a speck of dirt or mud on the leather, nor around the edges of the soles, so you've been staying inside. Avoiding the outdoors for your breaks, which means you haven't been standing in the rain for the past few days. Of course, you could have cleaned your shoes before coming in today, but if you'd gone outside at all today, you'd have tracked some remnant rain or mud onto your shoes. No ash, either, I note, so no absently flicking your cigarette. Also, your breath smells like mint, so you've been chewing gum or sucking those horrible breath mints we all rely on at the beginning – have you tried patches?"

Roger pulled his shirt sleeve up and beamed in approval at Sherlock's deduction. But really, it had been elementary, and the man's wife had been after him for ages to stop.

"Finally given into the missus, have you?"

"My doctor, actually," Roger replied. "Never too old to stop, he says."

"As does mine," Sherlock replied with a smile, although he had never actually smoked since meeting John. "And he's quite right. You want to enjoy your upcoming retirement, don't you?"

"That I do," Roger sighed. "Would prefer to enjoy it with a good smoke, but maybe a cigar."

"Stick with champagne, take it from me. But not too much."

"You're the expert," the older man agreed with a wink.

"In quitting, I believe we are all amateurs fumbling in the dark, hoping to get it right," Sherlock admitted. "However, sometimes, it actually works. May I go in?"

"Please do," Roger said, gesturing down the service hall.

"Who's in today?"

"The BBC is just wrapping up a practice session, but the London Orchestra is still working, I believe. A few films, too, but don't think they'd be your style."

"London _Symphony_ Orchestra," Sherlock corrected.

Roger just twitched his grey eyebrows at the younger man and Sherlock gave him a smirk in return as they made their way down the hall. He let Sherlock into a service stairwell and the detective thanked him, waiting until the door had closed again, shutting the late-fifties, salt-and-peppered haired security guard from view before taking the stairs two at a time. This was more sedate than his typical three at a time, and he thought John would be quite pleased, had he known.

He let himself easily and expertly into the vast and empty symphony hall, where, indeed, the London Symphony Orchestra was in full swing during rehearsal. Sherlock came into the very back of the balcony, stage left, and settled into a seat in the darkness. The entire auditorium was dark, of course, except for emergency lights on the floors along the aisles, since the orchestra was in rehearsal only and ostensibly closed to the public.

Sherlock slouched down – John hated when he did this, said it was bad for his back, but it was _his_ back, so he should know – and closed his eyes, folding his hands over his stomach, propping his right foot against the seat in front of him. If this had been a performance, he mused, this would probably be a hanging offense.

He listened to the sounds as they drifted up to him – apparently, they were practicing the overture from the _Marriage of Figaro_. He smiled, because this was one of his favourites and John didn't care for it, for some unknown reason. Had he married the most unreasonable man in history? No, certainly that would be Mycroft. This thought made him smile more and he opened his eyes when the music ceased and the conductor shouted something passionate at the bassoonists.

It lasted less than a minute and then there was the shifting of instruments and the orchestra paused as the conductor lifted his hands, holding them off a moment, and Sherlock closed his eyes when the music resumed.

He didn't do this nearly enough, he considered. It was enjoyable, free, and, best of all, it avoided the unnecessary and tiresome social interactions that clouded attending an actual performance. In this, it was just him, and the music.

A door behind him and to the left opened and shut nearly soundlessly and he scowled, slumping further down in his chair.

_Damn,_ he thought. Was he caught? If it wasn't Roger, but another security guard, he may have to dash. Although he still had Lestrade's police badge from the previous week, even if John didn't know this, and the DI had probably realized Sherlock had nicked it and just replaced it without reporting it stolen. It would be another drugs bust soon for him, he was certain. He'd have to make sure to schedule it so Josephine wasn't there.

The creak of a chair taking someone's weight made him open one eye and look over. A male figure had seated himself in the row behind Sherlock, near the other end, and did not seem to notice that he was there. The detective stayed still, keeping his ears tuned to the music but trying to evaluate his unwanted companion.

A man, certainly, because the silhouette gave that away, and probably younger than Sherlock, but at least in his late twenties, and tall, though not as tall as Sherlock himself. He held himself too well to be much younger, particularly an adolescent, but any more was difficult to ascertain, because it was too dark.

As though he sensed eyes on him, the stranger turned his head, making small motions as if trying to see Sherlock, to make out the distinction in the shadows. Sherlock stayed utterly still, hoping this would dissuade him, because he really did not want company and he felt mildly annoyed that someone had intruded on the habit he'd taken as solely his.

A moment later, the other man raised a hand, waving once, in acknowledgement if not greeting. With a sigh, Sherlock mirrored the gesture, then returned his attention to the orchestra below, letting the music wash over him.

He was hoping to be let alone, but after a few minutes, the chair creaked again and Sherlock scowled as he heard light footsteps approaching him, then weight against his row as the other man leant on the back of a chair two seats down from him. He tilted his head back, adopting a bored expression, but was surprised – shocked, really – to recognize the younger man peering through the darkness at him.

In the faintest of lights, his brown eyes seemed even darker, almost completely absorbed by dilated pupils that were attempting to pick up whatever illumination they could. His face split into a grin of recognition after a moment and Sherlock repressed a sigh at the banality and insanity of running into a stranger he'd actually met before, while enjoying an illicit symphony performance.

"The violinist," the younger man said, his voice low, smooth. It had a lovely cadence, Sherlock noted, and he wondered if the younger man was also a trained singer. But he was also a smoker; Sherlock could smell the distinct odour of strong cigarettes on his clothing and likely his hands. Given the concentration of the smell, he had had at least one before coming inside. Sherlock hadn't noted the smell on him at Angelo's, but neither had he been as close, and the younger man may easily not have had any cigarettes immediately before that. He sniffed quietly; the scent was familiar, not the brand he'd preferred, but he was certain he knew it, although could not place it.

"The cellist," Sherlock replied.

"Fancy meeting you here."

Sherlock gave a small grunt and silence fell over them again as they returned their attention to the music for several minutes, but something niggled at Sherlock.

"How did you get in?" he enquired, keeping his voice quiet. Surely he was Roger's only source of additional income in this regard, because he paid quite dearly for that service. If any of the other security guards had a similar arrangement with this cellist, he was going to have to make his business to find out about it.

"There are ways, with the right tools," the cellist said cryptically, flashing him a smile. "You?"

Sherlock didn't deign to reply, refocusing on the music.

"Why come now?" the cellist asked after a minute.

"I prefer my symphonies without the crowds," Sherlock said.

"Ah, the man with no audience is an audience of one of for our very own LSO. Somehow poetically apt."

_Apt_ , Sherlock thought. Well educated, even though his accent was middle-class, suggesting he was adopting it to better blend in or he'd been sent to a decent school above his parents' means on a scholarship or some such thing. Sherlock strongly suspected the latter, because there would be no need to blend in here, with only one other person for company and Sherlock's educated and upper class inflections. Unless the other man could not tell that, of course, because educated did not mean observant or intelligent.

"Quite," Sherlock replied. "And you?"

The other man shrugged; Sherlock caught it out of the corner of his eye as a shifting in the shadows only. After another moment, the man stood and easily stepped over the backs of the seats to settle in the same aisle as Sherlock.

"A goal, perhaps?" Sherlock asked, nodding to the stage, where the conductor was now haranguing one of the violinists. They waited until the music had sprung up again, from the beginning of the overture.

"One day, it would be nice, maybe," the younger man agreed. "A professional's fondest dream. But I have a steady job that I like."

"And yet you come here," Sherlock observed.

"And so do you."

"Yes, I did explain that," Sherlock replied with a slip of impatience in his voice. The other man grinned at him, his expression seemed starkly shadowed in the dim light, his face all angles and darkness, which created a disconcerting effect not unlike someone shining a torch on their own face from below. But with less illumination.

"To give them an audience," he replied easily, sitting back, hands on his knees. "Like I said, we all play for one. And they're down there," he nodded at the stage, "Rehearsing for an empty auditorium. Bit dull, don't you think?"

Sherlock was inclined to shake his head in disagreement; he would prefer playing for the empty auditorium, for the silence that ate up the notes and only wanted more, rather than the tedious audience with its shifting and shuffling and yawning and sneezing.

But his audience was John and Josephine. He wanted nothing more. Had he done so, he may have pursued the same goal that lead the musicians below to where they were on the stage.

"Is anyone listening?" he said softly, without intending to.

"Yes, I sup–" the younger man started, then froze.

Sherlock froze in response.

_No_ , he thought, then realized that _yes_ , it was _._

They turned to stare at one another and Sherlock was up first, but the younger man had anticipated this and shifted backwards, dodging his head out of Sherlock's way and then ducking forward again, pushing himself to his feet fast. Sherlock grabbed him, pushing backwards, trying to off-balance him but the younger man shifted his weight to one leg and kicked out, catching Sherlock in the knee. The detective hissed, battling for stability, tightening the grip he had on the other man's arms and pulling the cellist toward him.

They were both hindered by the narrow width of the aisle and the seats surrounding them, but Sherlock had experience and he launched his weight forward as the younger man lost his balance from being drawn toward Sherlock. The detective forced him back, pressing him against the seats and the younger man grunted, the arms and seat back digging into his own back. Sherlock pushed him into the seat hard, forcing his spine to bend uncomfortably and heard a hiss, and caught the younger man's head as he tried to snap it forward into Sherlock's mouth and nose.

"Don't think so," Sherlock panted and the younger man elbowed him hard, in the side, bringing his right arm around with considerable force. Sherlock grunted, releasing his hold somewhat, and the younger man took the advantage, dislodging himself and the detective, grabbing Sherlock's lapels and forcing him down onto the seats, almost reversing their positions.

Sherlock drove his own elbow into the younger man's left forearm when he went to close his hands around the detective's throat, ducking and moving forward, wrapping his hands around the younger man's waist, vaguely shocked no one below had seen or heard them, but then, how? It was dark, and the orchestra was in full swing.

They grappled, trying to find purchase as much as they tried to best the other, both of them breathing hard, the younger man cursing once.

"Police!" Sherlock hissed, knowing it wouldn't work, because what criminal madman simply surrendered when the police identified themselves?

He managed to gain enough space, keeping himself low, ignoring the younger man grasping at his coat and trying to off-balance him yet again, to swing a punch at the attacker's stomach, causing him to double over. Sherlock ducked out, catching him as he did so, but the younger man fought this, drawing on reserves of strength Sherlock told himself he should have noted – if he'd noted the man was a raging psychopath.

Now wired on adrenaline.

He kicked at the younger man's ankles, swiping, to get him off of his feet. The younger man stumbled but threw his weight toward Sherlock instead of just letting it go undirected and the detective grunted, grabbing his shoulders, pushing his arms back to prevent being at the end of a swing himself, but the younger man turned into this, shoving himself forward, shoving Sherlock backward so that they fell against the seats again.

The younger man swung and Sherlock ducked with another grunt, gritting his teeth, pushing himself into his attacker for space and to get him to lose his balance in the narrow aisle. The younger man cursed again and Sherlock threw a punch of his own, missing his mark, hitting him in the chest. The man huffed, stumbling back, winded, and Sherlock managed to stand, silently cursing the tiny space, swinging again, this time with better aim, catching the younger man square in the jaw, sending him toward the seats.

His attacker swung out an arm as he fell, connecting with Sherlock's head in an open palm that fisted immediately when it came into contact with something and Sherlock felt his head being instinctively jerked backwards.

_No_ , he thought, nausea and dizziness gripping him instantly. He made an involuntary sound but forced himself to ignore it, grit his teeth against it, drag his head back up.

The younger man hissed, triumphantly, and jerked Sherlock's head back again, yanking hard on his hair. Sherlock kicked again, calculating where the younger man's shin would be, and connected hard with his heel, just below the knee. The younger man hissed again, no triumph this time, and released his grip and Sherlock regrouped, pressing a hand against an arm rest, ready to push himself up when a hand closed over his face and he felt his head being snapped back against the back of the seat.

The darkness swam and he lost his grip, fingers flexing convulsively to reclaim it. The younger man gave a startled laugh, then drove Sherlock's head into the arm rest, hard.

His breath was knocked out of him, his lungs contracting painfully, the stitched and healing wound on his head flaring in new pain that seared down his spine, through his brain. He gasped, but the sound seemed muddled somehow, distant.

"Huh," the younger man said, almost pensively, and smashed Sherlock's head against the arm rest again, hitting precisely the same spot.

His brain lost its control of his body and he was slipping against the folded seats, hands trying to grasp something, anything. He felt his head connect again and gave a grunt, or thought it, his lips moving, but there seemed to be no sound, no sound from him, but there were violins below, music enveloping him. There was a brief, breathless laugh and then whatever was holding him was gone.

A moment's hesitation, a quiet curse, and footsteps receding quickly, quietly. Sherlock tried to breathe, tried to remember how to breath, tried to hold onto something, tried to force his legs to cooperate, to keep him up, to push him back up, tried to get his hands to grip but there was nothing there, nothing but air, and then the cold floor connecting with his body and an odd, hot agony radiating out from the crown of his head.


	4. Chapter 4

_Buzzing._

Vibration?

Where?

His hip hurt.

No, it was the vibration.

Phone.

Answer the phone.

Fumbling, where had all this fabric come from? Fingers were slow, unresponsive.

Buzzing.

Something between his fingers and the phone. His phone. His coat. Buzzing. Silence. Buzzing. No, not silence. Music, there was music. Why was there music? Darkness, so much darkness.

Buzzing. Vibration against his fingers. _Move, move,_ he told himself, against the strains from distant violins, cellos.

Cellos?

What about those? It was important.

Breathing, so was breathing. _Breathe._ _Your phone, turn it on. Answer it._

His thumb slid across the tiny screen, so bright, too bright, his eyes hurt looking at it, but he couldn't, couldn't see it properly, couldn't read the words, only make the motion, so familiar, so easy but _so very hard_ , leaving him exhausted, panting, gasping, his hand slumping against the thick fabric, his coat.

"Oi, Sherlock, there you are. Been working, have you? Listen, Doctor Richardson told me about a new Indian place in our area, I was thinking of picking some up for dinner. I know it's not the usual fare, but want to give it a try?"

_John,_ Sherlock thought dully, staring at the darkness. At the little light, in the darkness. Such a familiar voice. Warm. Comfortable. His.

"Sherlock?"

_John._

"Sherlock, you there? Hello?"

Licked his lips, painful, it was painful, breathing was painful. Closed his eyes.

Someone was beating his head with a hammer. In time with the music. Against the floor. His head was so hot against the cold floor.

Blinked.

Dark behind closed eyes, dark in front of open eyes.

"Sherlock?"

His arm was heavy, so heavy, as he tried to raise it, to bring the phone to his lips, to say something. He moved his lips, whispering a word, but the sound was too soft and the music was too loud and it was so hard.

"Hello? Sherlock?"

"John," he managed. Voice ragged, too quiet, hoarse. Pain flashed down his back as he swallowed and he groaned, faintly, trying to resist darkness.

"Sherlock!"

"…John."

So hard to breathe, to focus, to stay awake. He closed his eyes, wanting sleep. Why had he not wanted sleep recently? Something about John telling him not to. But not now, not now.

The little patch of light. Focus. On John.

"Sherlock, are you all right? Where are you?"

He shook his head, once, then moaned, the sound tearing out of him, nearly dropping his phone, fingers holding on somehow, instinctively.

"Hhh…" he said, breathing hard, chest heaving, he was going to throw up, no, not on his back, he'd choke and die. Roll over, but he couldn't and the darkness swam, pressing in, receding, pressing in, like tides, making the nausea worse.

"John. Help."

So hard.

"Sherlock!"

His fingers loosened on the phone and he heard John yelling at him from the other end and wanted to stop the words, he hated John yelling but the phone wasn't in his hand when his fingers twitched and there were no more words, no more breath for them, anyway.

* * *

_Lights._

"Hey, hey, can you hear me? What's your name? Wake up, wake up. Can you hear me? That's it, that's it. What's your name?"

"…John…"

"Good, John, good. How many fingers am I holding up?"

Lights.

In his eyes.

"Do you know where you are?"

_No._

"His name isn't John, got his wallet."

"Listen to me, what's your name? Can you tell me your name?"

"John–"

"Who's John? Can you tell me who John is?"

Fingers curled over where John's hand should be. Curled over nothing.

_John._

* * *

_White._

Lights.

Sweet air.

Brown eyes.

"Can you hear me?"

More lights, in his eyes, he pulled away, pain flaring again, but so comforting, now, so normal.

"No, no, I need to check your pupils. Can you hear me? My name is Doctor Babnin."

Fingers on his skin, latex. Something on his face, restrictive.

"You're all right, you're all right, hold still. Can you tell me your name?"

_John._

"Your name, can you tell me your name? Can you tell me where you are?"

_Home._

_Violins._

_Cellos._

"You're all right, we're going to take care of you. Can you hear me? Nod if you can hear me."

Whimpering. Muscles flared with pain, coursing down from his head. One nod. Too much.

"No, no, no, stay with me now. Stay with me. Focus on my voice. You can't sleep. I know you want to."

"…John…"

"What's that?"

"John…"

"John? Who's John? Can you tell me who John is?"

_Everything._

"Sherlock?"

_OhGodJohn._

Footsteps, fabric moving, footsteps. Shifting shadows, shifting light. He moaned against the brightness, fingers twitching.

Something wrapped around them.

Something warm. Familiar.

John looked down at him.

"Thank God," John murmured, voice was so loud and Sherlock winced, trying to turn away, but he was heavy, all over, and movement was pain and his eyelids dropped closed.

"You can't sleep!" John said but it didn't matter.

* * *

_Sound._

So loud.

He couldn't move.

Couldn't see, couldn't move.

But it didn't matter.

_Drugged_. He'd been drugged. Morphine? Yes. John had said– something. Years ago. About morphine. Who cared?

The sound was familiar.

_Cellos._

No, too loud. Resounding. He turned the word over in his mind. Re-sound-ing. Resonating. Sonar. Solar. Sun. Strum. Strings.

_Cellos._

_Remember. Cellos._

He tried. But he played violin. Certain about that _._

Magnets?

Oh yes. Magnetic– something. MRI. _Em, ar, i,_ he thought and wanted to laugh. For no reason.

The sound went on, and on, and on, until it was the only thing, that and John.

John.

Then it stopped. He stopped. Slept.

* * *

A phone call to Mycroft had Sherlock in an MRI almost before the police had arrived, dislodging the female detective John had never seen before and who was trying to ascertain what had happened, as if John knew. Sherlock had drifted in and out, struggling to hold onto consciousness, John could see, and had said all of two things: "John" and "cello".

Neither was very helpful.

And John wasn't certain at all about that last one, although Sherlock had inexplicably been at the Barbican when they'd found him, having apparently broken into one of the LSO's rehearsal sessions, so it might have made sense from the context alone.

He had ruled out "Jell-o" because he knew for sure that Sherlock didn't know what this was, especially since John himself kept it out of the flat. If his husband ever got hold of it, for experimental purposes, there'd be no end to the disasters.

The detective quizzed John, who knew nothing past what the paramedics had told the doctor. Yes, he'd called 999 and had them trace Sherlock's phone and stayed on the line, heart pounding, lightheaded, in a cold sweat, until they'd found him and told John, via the emergency operator, where they were taking him. He relayed this to the detective, who seemed stuck on why Sherlock was in the Barbican in the first place, and John had snapped at her finally, wishing, for once, that it was Donovan, who would at least listen to him. More or less.

She was displaced by the arrival of Lestrade and Sam, who came in together, and John wanted to groan at the presence of more police, even though he'd called the DI himself and fully expected him to haul out their Interpol connection. When Lestrade was uncertain, he liked to spread it around and make as many other people as uncertain as possible. John wondered if this pooled uncertainty could then be recombined into something that made sense.

"Where is he?" Lestrade demanded, casting a quick and expert glance around the tiny curtained room – Mycroft would get them relocated to a private room, but Sherlock still needed emergency care. "What the hell happened?"

"I don't know," John replied. He'd been repeating this at regular intervals to the detective and the doctor and wondered if anyone might start to believe him anytime soon.

He relayed what he did know – what was pieced together from a patchy phone conversation and information from the paramedics via the 999 operator: Sherlock appeared to have been attacked, and whoever had attacked him had either known or realized that he had a healing head injury and had hit his head repeatedly on the arm of one of the auditorium chairs before leaving him there.

For dead?

John shuddered.

"John. You should sit."

John blinked, remembering Sam was there, and noted the lack of agent-on-duty expression on his face. He was letting Lestrade sort things out with the detective, insofar as they could be, and John listened as she told him that the Barbican was being combed and the crime scene was secure. It was the first he'd heard about that.

Sam was wrinkling his nose, which John found odd.

John sat down, repressing an inward groan of relief. He hadn't realized how shaky his legs were. He rubbed his face with his hands, waiting for a moment to catch up, for everything to catch up with _him_ , for things to start making sense. Lestrade and the detective had stepped outside, at least, so it was less crowded in the tiny room and the gurney was missing, too, since they'd taken Sherlock on it.

"Do you need something? Water? Coffee?" Sam asked.

_Coffee_. That sounded brilliant. Even the thought made John's mouth water, but before he could reply, the curtain was twitched aside and the orderlies were wheeling a sleeping – or unconscious, because he _was_ drugged – Sherlock back in, followed by a doctor and a nurse and Lestrade and the detective.

Now it was crowded. It put John in the mind of a field operating theatre.

"Who are you people?" the doctor demanded.

Both police officers and the Interpol agent drew their badges and the doctor raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"It was my understanding that he was the victim," the man said.

"He is," Lestrade and Sam said at the same time.

The doctor – Babnin, John thought – looked at John and raised his eyebrows.

"We need to stitch and bandage him, then I've been told he's being moved to a private room until they get the MRI results."

The tone of his voice told John that Babnin did not like that. The order had come from higher up. _Much_ higher up.

"Right," John agreed. He should disagree – Sherlock should stay in the A&E, but John didn't want to. Mycroft would ensure that things got done, that Sherlock got the best treatment. John, as a doctor, would effectively be Mycroft's man on the ground. He knew the system, and knew how to bully it into working for him. He wasn't sure he liked being roped into working for Mycroft though, even if it was necessary.

He wondered where Mycroft was. He would normally be there by now.

_Edinburgh?_ John wondered, then shook his head.

Sam wrinkled his nose again and John wondered if he had a cold or allergies, but it was the wrong season for allergies. But the younger man frowned, turning slightly toward Sherlock, and did it again. And again.

Not wrinkling his nose, John realized. Sniffing.

John sat up straighter.

"Everyone stop," Sam said, quietly, calmly, without trace of urgency, so that everyone did, turning to look at him. He held up a hand, ignoring the gazes directed at him, and sniffed again.

"What is it?" Lestrade demanded.

"I smell something familiar," Sam said. "John. Where's his coat?"

It had been bundled into one of the white hospital bags and put under the gurney. John pulled out the bag, passing it off to Sam with a questioning look. The agent only nodded thanks and opened the bag, pulling out a bit of Sherlock's coat and smelling it carefully. He pulled away with a frown, then did this again.

Then he glanced at Sherlock, frown deepening.

"What is it?" Lestrade repeated.

Sam ignored him, stepping one step closer to the gurney, dislodging the nurse from her position. He sniffed the air again, then shook his head, twisting a bit to glance back at John.

"This is going to sound weird. Can I smell his hair?"

"His hair?" John asked.

"And his hands."

Everyone resumed their stares, only the tone of their expressions changed. Sam disregarded this as well, keeping his gaze fixed on John. John frowned, but if Sam of all people was making the request, it probably meant something.

"Um, all right," he said.

Sam nodded and stepped all the way up to the bed, evaluating Sherlock, then lifting his right arm from the wrist carefully and turning his palm up, sniffing it carefully. He blinked and drew back, then did this again before stepping up to the head of the bed and leaning over, inhaling when he was close enough to Sherlock's head to smell whatever it is he was searching for.

John thought it looked strange, but it was really not such an unreasonable request. He'd smelled his fair share of victims, for alcohol, vomit, other drugs, even perfumes or soaps. Sam wasn't a doctor, but he _was_ an experienced agent.

"He's not been smoking, has he?" he asked, straightening again, looking at John.

"No," John replied, shooting him a puzzled look. "I'd notice that. Why?"

"Because he smells of cigarettes. Only faintly. But not typical ones. I recognize this smell. It's a French brand, _Gitanes Brunes_. Only they don't make them in France anymore, only in one place in the Netherlands, so they're not especially easy to get. Whoever did this was smoking these, probably right before going inside."

He almost smiled at John's stunned and questioning expression, but the light didn't quite reach his green eyes.

"It's the same brand and type Veronique smokes," he said. "You work with her for eight years and _you_ see if you can ever shake that smell from your memory."


	5. Chapter 5

He woke up on the couch.

He was still so groggy every time he woke up, dizzy and nauseous, from the damned concussion and the damned Percocet that John made him take this time. It wasn't as though he needed it; ibuprofen would be enough.

But no, John was being Doctor John and insisting and Sherlock hadn't the strength to refuse, even though he wanted to. Two concussions in the space of two weeks had made it hard to string a coherent thought together at first and John always caught him when the mood swings were bad, not making him snappy, but making him lethargic.

He hated sleeping this much.

He felt fine, he really did, except when he tried to do anything too strenuous, like move or breathe.

Sherlock rolled carefully onto his back, covering his eyes with his hand against the light that still seemed too bright even now, three days later. Without him intending it at all, a groan slipped past his lips and he tried to bite down on it, but too late. His lips were dry, chapped, he thought, which was uncomfortable. The Percocet made him nauseous enough sometimes to throw up, which made him dehydrated.

Who had thought this was a good drug to prescribe to a head injury patient who already had nausea, dizziness, and mood swings?

_Probably thought it wouldn't make much difference, then_ , he told himself and almost smiled, his lips twitching.

John would have heard him and would be getting a glass of water and yes, there was the kitchen tap running then stopping and footsteps.

But that wasn't John.

Wasn't Tricia, either, nor Mrs. Hudson, nor Mycroft, nor Sam.

_Who_? Sherlock thought, then swung into irritation that he couldn't identify the person bringing him the water and why on Earth had John thought it was a good idea to leave him with someone he didn't know immediately upon waking and where was John anyhow? What gave him the right to leave?

He was the one who had insisted on the trip to the hospital this time around, and was the one insisting on the Percocet. He should be here, taking care of Sherlock.

He forced his eyes open, but, the moment before he did so, he felt a light hand on his head, carefully avoiding the healing wound, and realized who it was.

"Mum?" he asked, his voice thick with sleep and the effects of the concussions, laced with disbelief.

"Hello, darling," she said and he felt a pair of warm lips press gently on his forehead for a moment then withdraw. Sherlock managed to move his hand from his eyes and something cool and smooth was pressed into it, a glass of water. He sipped it slowly, feeling her steadying it for him, taking his time to avoid any sudden nausea.

"How are you feeling?" she asked and he managed to focus on her, although his vision was blurry from the injuries and the Percocet, but only somewhat. She was crouched down next to the couch, expression concerned, grey eyes bright. Her hair, so brilliantly white, so unlike the dark hair he remembered her having when she'd been younger, was swept elegantly off of her face.

There was a chair beside the couch, he noted. But she hadn't just moved it, or he would have heard it. She had been there awhile, watching him sleep.

"Fine, Mum," he assured her, to which the corners of her mouth twitched, slightly, and her eyes glinted with a wry look. "Why are you here?"

"John called me."

"Why did John call you?"

"Because you were attacked and you have another concussion. He thought I might be concerned. He was right."

Sherlock wrinkled his nose; John was such a _doctor_ sometimes. And he had an irritating habit of combining that with being such a _husband_.

"I'm fine," he repeated.

She sighed, expression shifting to exasperation.

"You are not fine, Sherlock. Two concussions in as many weeks. This is going to be the death of you."

"Hardly," he replied. "Besides, they were unrelated."

"I know that," Sibyl answered. "But you need to take better care of yourself."

"I'm hardly to blame for someone in a pub launching a poorly-aimed beer mug at me. Nor for a someone attacking me in a symphony hall."

Sibyl reclaimed her chair, watching him with strained patience.

"Honestly, Mum, it will get better," he said, ignoring the flare of nausea, because the damned painkillers had no say in what his body was going to do. "John says so, Tricia says so, the doctors at the blasted hospital said so. I'll be fine."

She was silent for a moment, then shook her head.

"Oh, Sherlock, you have no idea," she sighed, "how much you make me worry."

"I can take care of myself," he retorted. "I'm not a child."

She reached out, taking one of his hands, then leaned forward, pressing another kiss against his forehead, this one lingering a moment longer.

"No, darling, but you are _my_ child."

Sherlock wrinkled his nose in displeasure again. There was no escaping _that_ , was there? Almost every other relationship he could dodge, even his brother, because most people understood, at least on some level, the possibility of not getting on with one's sibling, even if they disapproved of it.

Besides, Sibyl was not Mycroft. Sherlock much preferred her company.

He settled the empty glass on his chest and closed his eyes. The conversation had drained him in a way that was inappropriate but unavoidable. Everything did these days, although, admittedly, the days blurred together and it was only when he focused on what John had told him that he knew it had been three days since he'd been released from the hospital.

And he'd been in the hospital for a day and a half, which was more than long enough by his standards. They'd only discharged him because he tried to walk out on his own and John had agreed – reluctantly, Sherlock could tell by the way John related the story – to take him home and be responsible for him.

Well, he'd spent most of that time in bed or on the couch, so he was behaving, according to John's standards, he thought. He was fairly certain he could not get into much trouble by sleeping, but not entirely. It seemed difficult to make these sorts of judgements right now.

He felt the glass being lifted from him and Sibyl went back into the kitchen, running more water. She returned and put the cool glass against his lips, tilting it, and Sherlock drank it like an obedient child.

_Her child_ , he thought with a quirk of his lips.

"Where's John?" he murmured sleepily after he'd finished the water and felt her hand on his forehead, smoothing back his hair.

"He's just gone out for a bit," Sibyl replied.

"Why?" Sherlock asked, trying to fight off sleep, feeling it creep back into his mind, his muscles, and the painkillers were making it too difficult to fend off. He groaned quietly, wanting just to stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time, wanting John to be there.

"He went for a walk. He needed a change of scenery."

_What's wrong with here?_ Sherlock wanted to ask, but his mind refused to obey and he felt his mother's lips press against his forehead again the moment before he went back to sleep.

* * *

John had thought getting out would be a good idea.

He'd bundled up and walked over to Regent's Park, taking the trail along one side of the boating lake, which had ice along the fringes already, although it was thin and almost completely transparent.

It felt good to be outside, in the chilly air and brittle November sunshine, and the movement had helped, making him feel more himself, less tired, less anxious.

For about ten minutes.

Then he realized that every time he passed someone, he was sniffing for the smell of the French cigarettes Sam had picked up on Sherlock's coat and hands and hair in the hospital. The cigarettes the attacker had been smoking.

Every single person, especially the men, was a suspect. When he actually did pass someone smoking, John would pause without thinking about it, trying to fit the scent of their cigarettes with the one the attacker smoked. Waiting to find the right person, so he could snag him, jump on him, tackle him to the hard, cold pavement.

It took a few more minutes to realize how much rage this inciting, how his shoulders tensed with each stranger who passed him by, how he clenched his jaw, how balled his hands into fists, how his short fingernails bit into the skin on his palms.

How he envisioned encountering the man, just so he could beat the crap out of him. With this, his hands itched, wanting to punch something – some _one_. For every blow Sherlock had suffered, John was going to inflict five of his own, good ones, straight to the man's jaw or nose or stomach. Over and over and over.

He had to stop and sit on a bench when he realized he was shaking, had to take a few deep breaths and close his eyes, refocusing himself.

It was a bloody miracle that Sherlock was not any worse off than he was. That he'd suffered no permanent, long-term harm, that his brain in his apparently thick skull had not been seriously battered to the point of actual brain damage. When the radiologist had come with the MRI results and given them to John, Sam had had to catch him and steer him to a chair. John had been certain there'd be something. Swelling, bruising, bits broken off and floating around, he didn't know. Sherlock's hearing and, thank God, his vision, seemed all right, although he complained of ringing in his ears which was not unusual, and of blurred vision, which was probably a combined effect from the Percocet and the concussions.

_God_ , John thought. For all the things Sherlock put his body through, it was almost unbelievable he was still alive, let alone functioning, let alone still a genius.

Not that it seemed that way right now. They had the same conversation over and over, each time Sherlock woke up. What had happened? How long had it been? Did they know who had attacked him? John was getting sick and tired of repeating this continuously, and thought if it had not been for Tricia and Sam, he may have lost his patience, not really at Sherlock, but at the situation that had caused him to be repeating these same questions.

Tricia and Sam had kept him company at intervals, when they could, and had taken some turns babysitting – for lack of a better word – the detective so John could sleep or shower without leaving his husband unattended. Sherlock would have been better off in the hospital, but he never would have stayed. He'd made that quite clear by removing his IV lines and walking unsteadily into the corridor while John had been dozing between nurses' rounds. To offset them having to restrain him, which would have gone over poorly to say the least, John had signed him out and taken him home. Sherlock had somehow latched onto the fact that he had no actual brain damage, and had decided this meant he was good enough to be discharged.

Arguing with a concussed person was bad enough. Arguing with Sherlock with a concussion was like shouting at a brick wall to get it to crumble. A supreme waste of effort and time.

Occasionally, Sherlock was awake when Tricia or Sam were there, and seemed confused by their presence, and then later, he would be puzzled by the fact that they had gone. He had no means of connecting time or events, although John could tell he was trying and was becoming frustrated with how difficult it remained.

John had rung Sibyl and asked her to come visit. She'd known, of course, because Mycroft had told her, and had rung John after Sherlock had been taken home, getting information from him since Sherlock was not about to provide any coherent explanations. Or sentences. He was glad she hadn't simply rushed to London, but had waited until John was able to deal with her, because Mycroft didn't have the presence of mind to actually consider what might be inconvenient for the doctor. John had turned him away twice, irritated that he'd shown up at the flat without warning, especially since Sherlock had been sleeping both times. He understood Mycroft's concern for his brother, of course, but he couldn't deal with Mycroft just sitting there, watching Sherlock sleep. Or assuring John they were working on finding who had attacked him, or any of the other things he'd go on about.

_Everyone_ was working on finding who'd attacked him. Lestrade had made sure that the skin under Sherlock's fingernails had been swabbed for skin cells that weren't his, since he'd obviously hit whoever had attacked him. Unfortunately, John knew that DNA took time, and it also required that the suspect be in the system from some previous crime in which he'd left DNA. The police had locked down the Barbican and interviewed all of the staff, but no one remembered anyone unusual or out of place. John didn't find this surprising – in a place that big, who would know? If he'd been caught on camera, he didn't stand out. And Sherlock could not identify him, since he remembered nothing from the incident.

_Almost_ nothing.

When asked, each time, he would say he remembered violins and cellos.

Although this was impressive, because he didn't remember anything at all from the first concussion he'd taken almost two and a half weeks ago, it didn't help much. He'd been listening to a rehearsal session for the London Symphony Orchestra. They'd been practicing some Mozart piece, from what John understood. And Sherlock played the violin himself. The fact that he had some patchy memory of this was not really surprising, and John wondered if it was a memory at all, or just a false memory.

Eventually, he got cold and got up off of the bench and kept walking, to get his blood moving again, to warm himself up. John tried to avoid glaring at the other pedestrians on the path, but everyone seemed suspicious to him. He almost laughed to himself when he realized Sherlock could probably have picked out which ones were genuinely feeling guilty about some real transgression. John felt like everyone was looking at him and bundled his hands into his pockets, trying not to pay attention. He saw culpability everywhere, in a smile, in a laugh that passed him by, in a scowl, in a yawn.

_Where the bloody hell are you?_ he asked the attacker silently.

When he glared suspiciously at a teenage girl walking with her headphones in, the music loud enough to bleed out of the ear buds, he decided it was probably best just to go home. With a sigh, he turned and made his way back, feeling no better for the enforced walk, but knowing he wouldn't feel much different back at the flat. Even with Mycroft's assurances that their flat was being watched for their own safety, even with Lestrade keeping people on it as well, he felt unsafe.

Because out there, someone was walking about, free, and had attacked Sherlock, John's husband, had smashed his head against an arm rest and had walked away, unnoticed, unremarked. He wouldn't feel better until that man was caught, and, unfortunately, he knew that was probably highly dependent on Sherlock improving enough to focus on something other than asking the same three questions, providing them with information that was probably lost to post-traumatic amnesia, or the attacker going after someone else and somehow slipping up, or someone who could identify the smell of the cigarettes actually stumbling upon him.

All in all, John thought, not very good odds.


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

" _Et vraiment, je pense que–_ oh, you're awake."

Sherlock blinked rapidly, raising his head slightly. Sam was watching him from the dining room table, leaning back in a chair, his laptop open in front of him, his white shirt sleeves rolled up past his elbows and his suit jacket tossed casually over the chair beside him. He quirked an eyebrow at Sherlock, green eyes amused.

Sherlock half sat up, glancing around the silent flat. He listened carefully, but heard no other noises, no other voices that would have indicated anyone else was there, nor was Sam on his phone, nor was he wearing one of those infernal ear devices, and it didn't appear he was speaking to anyone on his laptop, given that his gaze didn't flicker back to the screen.

Sherlock mentally shook away the vestiges of grogginess – it was getting easier now that John had let up on making him take Percocet and he'd switched to ibuprofen. And, although he disliked admitting it, since he'd been able to keep food and liquid down on a consistent basis.

His head still hurt almost all of the time, but at least it was tolerable now, and his vision was mostly clear and the ringing in his ears had faded. He knew he had more bloody healing itchiness to look forward to, as well as more fatigue, more mood-swings, more recovery time.

It was so tedious.

So was being babysat.

"Where's John?"

"Upstairs. Sleeping. Getting some real sleep. He's exhausted."

Sherlock found this unlikely. He himself had been sleeping a great deal, and John had been taking care of him, but it could not be hard to care for a sleeping patient. Could it? It's not as though he could require anything while semi-conscious.

"Who were talking to?" Sherlock asked.

"You," Sam replied.

Sherlock scowled.

"I was sleeping," he pointed out. He wrinkled his nose in displeasure; had Sam been trying to wake him? Then he realized that he disliked all of this sleeping. Could he dislike both the sleeping and the being woken at the same time? Interesting. He filed this away for future consideration.

"I know, hence my 'oh, you're awake' comment. Did you know you talk in your sleep?"

At this, Sherlock fell back against his pillow, ignoring the flash of pain in his head when he did that, because it wasn't serious.

Blast, now Sam knew? He scowled to himself; it had been bad enough when only John had known, although most likely Mycroft was also aware of it, because he used to keep bugs and cameras in the flat, years ago. John had told him that he was very coherent in his sleep, which was as it should be if he were going have conversations over which he had no control. He wondered if there were ways of combating this, or training one's self out of doing it, and resolved to research this as soon as his eyes could tolerate the brightness of a computer screen for more than a few minutes and as soon as they'd caught both the man who'd attacked him and this blasted serial killer with his message in the shades of blue of silk scarves.

"Stop grinning," he said to Sam without looking up.

"I'm not grinning," Sam said, obviously grinning. Sherlock looked up and shot him another scowl and Sam's grin widened.

"And we were having this conversation in French, were we?"

"Yes," Sam replied.

Sherlock sighed and pushed himself up, propping himself against the arm of the couch, reaching down for the glass of water that was kept on the floor beside him. Somehow, it was always full, and he supposed John had left strict instructions that it should be so. It felt like having servants again, and he disliked that sensation. It was _his_ flat. Granted, John did the bulk of the chores, but John lived there as well and wasn't in Sherlock's employ.

"And do you plan on telling me what we were talking about?"

"Sheets."

"Sheets?"

"Yes, bed sheets."

"What? Why in the world would we be talking about bed sheets?"

"Don't ask _me_ ," Sam said. "You started it. Apparently, you felt it necessary to share your opinion on the subject. You seem to feel quite strongly that anything less than a one thousand thread count is not worth even being used as a duster – I bet you don't even dust – and that really, Egyptian cotton is the only fabric that should be used. I mean, I knew you were posh, but this is a bit above and beyond, isn't it?"

Sherlock glared at him and Sam kept grinning. He had been working, Sherlock could see, because there was a small pile of case files beside his laptop, and he'd very carefully moved the scarves that were still inhabiting the table to make room for himself. He had a pen in his right hand and was tapping it absently against the notepad that sat in front of the files, the pen nib biting lightly into the yellow paper.

"I know what I like," Sherlock sniffed. "I can hardly help it if you have poor taste about these things, Sam."

"Actually I prefer any one-hundred percent cotton weave, doesn't have to be Egyptian, but it's nice to get the feel of satin without actual satin, which is just a pain because it slips around all over the place. Although I'm not picky about thread count like you are."

Sherlock stared at him.

Sam had grown with two older siblings and parents who had worked long hours for not much pay, lived in a tiny house in one of the frankly poorer suburbs, which did not especially lend itself to discerning taste in – well, anything. His undercover aliases had been similarly middle class and Sherlock had seen Sam Waters' flat back when he'd still been Sam Waters, although, admittedly, Sam's own flat now was much better decorated and furnished. Sherlock had attributed that to the fact that Sam had chosen it for himself. And he _had_ lived in France, but most of that time, he'd been hospitalized, and Sherlock strongly suspected that even French private hospitals were not quite that luxurious.

"What do you know about sheets?" Sherlock snapped, feeling annoyed that Sam had been able to surprise him.

The pause was a bit too long and Sam's eyes were suddenly a bit too dark.

"I was educated," he said shortly.

The hard look in Sam's eyes was all he needed to see to know just who Sam's educator was. Sherlock had mostly refrained from asking Sam for details about his captivity but now he was unable to keep the unspoken questions from flashing across his face. He kept silent, trying schooling his expression carefully into nothing, trying to keep it that way despite the shock and dismay.

Sam stared at him, gaze still level, but he stopped tapping his pen and his grin was gone, vanished as though it had never been there. His fingers tightened around the pen, but not so much that his skin went white. His lips twitched, once. Sherlock wanted to shift, but sensed that movement now would be unwelcome. The silence drew out for a moment and Sherlock saw Sam tense and then force himself to relax.

"Fine," the younger man said. "Fine. After he paraded me around on the Strand for your benefit and that of the rest of the Met, he took me back to one of his flats. Don't ask me where, because he didn't let me see, and I was so doped up on scopolamine that it's hard to remember a lot from actually being outside, or in the car. I don't know if he had a medical degree or what, but he would drug me at precisely the right amount for just long enough that all of the things I _don't_ want to remember, I remember quite well. But I do remember looking into the camera, because I made myself do it, which seemed so hard, because I was so stoned.

"I don't think this was where he lived most of the time, but he probably had a dozen properties at least scattered about the city. Anyway, he handcuffed me to the bed – do you know, the headboard had some sort of hook fixed to it for handcuffs? Do you understand what that means? Wasn't just me, you know, not that this is really surprising, but I remember thinking something like _Good Lord, he knows what he's doing_ , of course, by that point, I already knew that.

"Then he subjected me to a lecture on some of the finer points of life, such as thread counts in both cotton and silk – I can tell you those were silk – and how to tell the difference between hand-woven and machine-made for natural fibres and how British people have no good sense of _sense_ , how we ignore the information our bodies, our skin, is giving us, how we refuse to actually appreciate or luxuriate in _sensuality_ because we mistake this for sexuality and it offends our _sensibilities_. So we all walk around blind, according to him, or touchless, I suppose. Oddly enough, I think he was right, but it was poorly timed for me, because then he raped me. For the fourth time."

Sherlock did not move. Sam was still staring straight at him, pen still pressed against the yellow notepad, a bit harder now.

"I have this whole catalogue of 'the worst thing'. There's just too many too chose from. One of them is the bloody Internet, bloody YouTube, and the people who actually bloody filmed the events on the bridge. Thankfully, they're all just far enough away I can't really see myself clearly, and I've had to put a ban on watching it anyway. But that bruise I had on my face, that mark, do you remember? I got that from being pressed up against the radiator in that abandoned flat. That was the first three times. Just thank God there was no heat to that flat, or it'd have been a lot worse. Can you imagine? I'm telling you how it could be worse."

He paused, giving a flat, mirthless chuckle, eyes sliding away for a moment, then back.

"You know what another worst thing is? I bloody knew, Sherlock. I bloody knew from the moment I talked to you that it was likely to happen." Sam leaned forward, green eyes blazing now. "I walked right into this. Do you know, they always tell rape victims, this wasn't your fault? Do you know how hard it is to believe that when I was part of the set up? When I knew? And when I know I'd make the same choice over and over and over if I had to go back and choose again?"

"Why would you do that?" Sherlock asked.

"Out of stupidity and desperation. Because he _had_ to stop. Because he had to _be_ stopped. Because if you combined what I know about him, what you know about him, what anyone else who ever investigated him knows about him, I still think we wouldn't half understand his resources. Because he had a hook on his bloody headboard for handcuffs and I was _not_ the first. But I _was_ the last. Do you actually understand that? Do you actually understand that you were the _only_ person who could stop him?"

"Yes," Sherlock said simply, a small part of him wishing Sam hadn't chosen now to have this conversation, when Sherlock was not especially at his best.

Had he done that on purpose?

It had always irritated him slightly that Sam was smarter than he let on, and he had wondered at the need to mask intelligence, why anyone would choose this. In the same way that he was quite good at keeping his expression neutral, he was good at keeping his level of intelligence neutral. Why bother?

_Protection, of course_ , Sherlock thought. As a child from his older siblings, who were not as intelligent as he was, and as an adult from the people whom he'd been investigating under cover.

It was a good thing, Sherlock considered, that Moriarty had never got to Sam before Interpol had.

Then it annoyed him an irrational amount that Sam probably thought precisely the same thing about Sherlock – without the Interpol part, of course – on a regular basis.

"Right, now do you understand that he used unwilling bait and you used willing bait? He strapped bombs to five people just to draw you out. All I had to do was just wait. Because he couldn't lose. Up here, in his head," Sam tapped his forehead. "Not against you, certainly not against me. Not really. But when you're a cop – or a consulting detective or an Interpol agent – you do understand you might lose. Because we do, all the time."

"And what did you lose?" Sherlock asked, keeping his voice cool.

Sam tossed the pen down in front of him and pushed his laptop aside, leaning forward, arms on the table.

"Do you know what I did last year on October sixth? I smashed everything in my flat that I could. All the dishes, all the glasses, all the mirrors, all the picture frames. Everything. It took me three days to clean up and I cut myself more times than I remember, nothing serious, but I ran through an entire box plasters. Do you know what I did this year? I woke up in the morning and couldn't remember if I'd forgotten to buy coffee. I spent two hours doing the things I normally do – having breakfast, working – before I realized what day it was. So you ask me what I lost? Time. Maybe sanity, for a little while, yes. But you don't ask me what I gained. My _life,_ Sherlock. Because he's dead. And how many other people have gained their lives back, too? You and John did. And how many others we'll never know about? So what, you want to know if it was worth it? Absolutely not. Absolutely."

He paused, then shook his head.

"Happy you know?"

"No," Sherlock said flatly. "Although I am glad you told me."

Sam was silent for a moment, the gave a dry chuckle, shaking his head again. But his eyes were lighter and there was some actual humour in his expression.

"You know, so am I," he said, slightly surprised. "Wouldn't have thought it."

He pushed himself to his feet and crossed the room.

"Give me the glass," he instructed and Sherlock passed it off. Sam went into the kitchen and the detective crossed his arms, appreciating the moment to digest what he'd just been told. It was not in the least pleasant information, but he did feel better for knowing. He did not know why this was.

Sam came back after a few minutes, having left the water run longer than necessary, giving them both some time to think, to let the subject settle and be put aside, at least for the time being. He passed back the glass and Sherlock sipped the water obediently – John seemed to have some sort of emotional investment in Sherlock being properly hydrated. He supposed that was probably an important thing in Afghanistan, in the heat.

He frowned, shifting through memories, not of John, of his own.

"Why do I remember cellos?" he asked.

"You tell me," Sam said, reclaiming his seat at the table. "You've asked me that before. John says you ask all the time."

Sherlock scowled; his memory was better now, but the first few days were hazy and patchy at best. His clearest recollection from that time was his mother's visit, and he actually wish she'd stayed on longer, because he enjoyed her company and he felt he could use her presence to somehow offset Mycroft's. As if the more time he spent with her, the less he would have to spend with his brother. Some sort of familial balance sheet.

A creak from upstairs told Sherlock that the subject of Sam's last sentence was now awake, and John came down a moment later, sleep still clinging to the edges of his eyes, his hair askew. Sherlock fished his phone out of his pocket and took a picture and John scowled at him.

"What was that for?" he asked. Sherlock only raised an eyebrow in reply. He liked having pictures of John. Especially when he looked positively adorable, but he'd be damned if he were going to say that out loud, especially the word "adorable".

Sam and John greeted each other comfortably, casually, and Sherlock noted the shift in Sam, as if their conversation hadn't happened, or, more accurately, as though it had eased something in the younger man and continuing it was no longer necessary. John went into the kitchen, asking if either of them wanted tea.

"Yes, please," Sam said and Sherlock just grunted. He knew he would get it whether he wanted it or not.

Sam picked up his pen again, then stopped suddenly, frowning. Sherlock paused as well, keeping his gaze on his friend, suddenly concerned, but Sam turned to stare at him, looking surprised.

"What?" Sherlock asked.

Sam blinked, green eyes puzzled for a moment, then he opened his laptop suddenly, attention diverted, and began searching for something. After only a minute or two, his expression lit up and he pushed himself to his feet, grabbing his suit jacket and pulling it on, then going for his coat and scarf. John came back into the living room, holding two tea mugs, but Sam shook his head with a smile and a light in his eyes.

"I'll be back shortly," he said. "There's something I need to try. Don't go anywhere."

This last was directed at Sherlock.

"I haven't gone anywhere in seven days," Sherlock complained.

"Well, don't start now," Sam retorted with a grin. "I won't be long. I have an idea."


	7. Chapter 7

"You know, you have the strangest friends," John commented after Sam had left.

Sherlock turned to stare at him, narrowing his eyes somewhat.

"Perhaps I'm wrong, because I have had two concussions recently, but I seem to remember _you_ asking _me_ to marry you three years ago."

John grinned.

"Good point," he conceded.

Sherlock rolled his eyes and sipped water from his refilled glass.

"How are you feeling?" John asked, running a hand through his short hair, which really only served to make it stand up more and in different directions.

"It's the bloody cellos again," Sherlock complained. "John, why can't I _remember_?"

"Because you were attacked," John said flatly, the smile disappearing from his face and eyes.

"This is hardly an uncommon occurrence," Sherlock pointed out.

"I do _not_ want to know," John muttered, almost under his breath, folding his arms over his chest. "Normally it doesn't land you in the hospital twice in two weeks, although it probably should, if you had anything remotely resembling concern for your health."

"I'm very concerned," Sherlock countered. "I'm drinking my water, aren't I?"

John snorted, still displeased. Then he sighed, crossing the room and perching on the arm of the sofa behind Sherlock, forcing the detective to shuffle forward carefully, the glass of water still in his hand.

"Let me have a look," he said and put his fingertips on Sherlock's head. With a scowl and an inward sigh, Sherlock held still, letting John poke and prod – very carefully – at the stitched and healing cuts. Now, of course, there were two, and John had told him he was lucky it wasn't more.

He didn't feel particularly lucky.

"Well, no bits of brain leaking out," John said.

"Oh, please," Sherlock said. "I hardly think that's appropriate bedside manner."

"Well, you are an especially stubborn and belligerent patient."

"I am neither stubborn nor belligerent, John," Sherlock snapped, realizing then that he sounded both by saying that. "I've been listening to your instructions very carefully and sleeping and all that rubbish. I feel fine."

"Uh-huh. Until you stand up and get dizzy or try to read something for more than a few minutes. If I didn't have people watching you when I have to sleep, you'd probably be down at the Yard right now harassing Lestrade or hunting down criminals on your own."

"Honestly, John," Sherlock said, twisting his head back to see John somewhat. "Your bedside manner is really atrocious. You're almost as bad as Tricia."

John leaned over and rolled his eyes pointedly.

"She has excellent bedside manner. I've seen it. She's quite nice to all her patients."

"She isn't nice to me."

"Not letting you 'just try this one thing with my chemistry set, I'm sure it's fine' while you have a concussion and while her one-year-old daughter is in the flat does not qualify as not nice, Sherlock. It qualifies as practical and responsible. Which, I do appreciate, doesn't really apply to you."

Sherlock huffed, crossing his arms and slouching down, pinning John's legs between himself and the couch. John chuckled, kissing the top of Sherlock's head lightly and Sherlock tilted his head back as far as he could. John kissed his forehead, looking amused.

"And no," John said.

"Why not?" Sherlock growled.

"Well, for one thing, we don't know how long Sam's gone and he'll just have Mrs. Hudson let him if we don't answer the door, and for another, you're likely to either pass out from any kind of exertion or fall asleep, which is actually a bit worse. I don't think my ego can take that."

He grinned, belying his words somewhat, and Sherlock sighed.

"Have you eaten anything since Sam's been here?" John asked.

"No, John," Sherlock said in a voice of strained patience. "I've been sleeping almost the whole time."

"All right, I'm going to make us both something to eat, then."

"I don't understand why I can't sleep with you when you're asleep," Sherlock complained.

"Because then no one can keep an eye on you."

"If I'm sleeping, surely I don't need keeping an eye on."

"Only until you wake up and I don't," John replied. "At any rate, you're much better than you were, so you can probably start picking up your old routines again. _Slowly._ "

Sherlock wrinkled his nose at his husband as John slipped off the sofa and went into the kitchen. He fixed them some omelettes and tea and Sherlock ate slowly, not really hungry, mulling over the conversation he'd had with Sam, wondering where the agent had gone, and what had sparked the sudden realization in his eyes before he'd left.

It was about an hour before Sam returned, John letting him in downstairs. He clattered up the stairs ahead of the doctor, grinning triumphantly as he stepped into the flat, holding up a small blue package.

"Cigarettes?" Sherlock asked.

"What?" John asked from behind Sam, locking the door behind them.

"Yes," Sam said to Sherlock.

"Well, this is more like it," Sherlock replied and Sam snorted.

" _Not_ for you," he said.

"Then who? You? You don't smoke."

"Yes, I know," Sam replied. He shrugged off his coat and suit jacket again, tossing them over Sherlock's chair. "But I recognized the smell. This is Veronique's brand. Also what your attacker was smoking."

"Yes, you've told me that, and I remember you saying so," Sherlock replied.

"What's the strongest sense associated with memory?" Sam asked.

"Smell," Sherlock replied promptly, then shot a look at John, admonishing him for his surprised expression. "Oh, of course I know that, it's actually important. It can be used to trigger recollections from witnesses and – Aha."

"Right," Sam said grinning. "If I remembered it, you might, too. John, can you get me a lighter?"

He flipped the packaged upside down on the end table, tapped it once, then opened it, pulling out one of the cigarettes as John went into the kitchen and rummaged for a lighter.

"Get me an empty tin or something, too, so I can keep the ash from going all over your floor," Sam called. He put the rest of the package down and then put the cigarette between his lips, accepting the lighter from John when the doctor came back.

"Do you actually know how to smoke?" Sherlock asked.

"Tried it when I was a teenager. Disgusting. This is going to be worse, because it's stronger."

"It would be much simpler if I did it," Sherlock said.

"No!" John and Sam said in unison, John more forcefully, Sam's voice made somewhat indistinct by the cigarette between his lips. Sherlock looked at it longingly and sighed, even though _Gitanes_ was not his brand. He was perfectly willing to try it. For the sake of experimentation, of course.

Sam flicked the lighter and held it to the end of the cigarette, inhaling lightly until the flame caught. Then he coughed, pulling the cigarette out and making a face.

"Ugh," he said. He tossed the lighter beside the open package and took another drag, this time more carefully, wincing as he did so. "Good Lord, that's disgusting," he complained as he exhaled a puff of smoke between his lips. "No bloody wonder Veronique is always so tetchy. This is the most foul thing I've ever tasted. Here, pass me that glass."

John passed off the empty glass he was holding and Sam moved around Sherlock's chair to lean against it, closer to the couch. He held the cigarette between his index and middle finger and tapped some of the ash inexpertly into the glass. John snorted, probably at the expression on Sherlock's face when the detective twitched his eyebrows upward in disapproval.

Sam smoked the cigarette, making faces the whole time, letting the scent fill the flat. Sherlock closed his eyes, ignoring John, who clearly had mixed feelings about this, ignoring Sam, who was trying not to cough or complain. He inhaled deeply and slowly, teasing apart the scents in the smoke, willing his mind to remember. The air filled enough that he could inhale the faint aroma each time he breathed, and he could tell by the change in the pattern of Sam's breathing that he'd finished. This was accompanied by his footsteps retreating to the kitchen and the tap running for a moment as he fetched himself a glass of water.

Sherlock could feel John's eyes on him the whole time, but ignored this through practice, keeping himself very still.

The scent nudged at his brain.

_What?_ he asked himself.

He remembered it suddenly, yes. Clinging, almost cloying, unaccustomed pungency in the near-darkness.

Accompanied by the presence of another person in the shadows, a silhouette, really, sitting further away, then coming nearer, but there seemed to be no threat in this memory, no sense of warning.

Violins and cellos.

He pushed this away, because it was unnecessary and distracting, although yes, he remembered the orchestra now, the sounds of the music. Music interrupted by someone else.

Sherlock frowned without realizing it. He'd never had anyone find him, disturb him, while he was listening to rehearsals.

Had he been tracked?

But no, there was too much surprise in the memory of the voice. Which seemed familiar.

What had they talked about? He'd have sensed some warning in the air, had it been there, of course. What was the surprise he recalled in the memory of that voice?

He took another deep breath and his eyes flew open, shocked, and he met John's gaze.

" _The violinist."_

"The cellist," he said, and _of course_ that was why he'd remembered cellos. Had forced himself to remember cellos. When he could cling to nothing else, he'd compelled his mind to hold onto that one thing, that memory that made no sense on its own but was clear now, so obvious.

"What?" John asked.

"The cellist, it was the cellist."

"What, from the LSO?" John enquired, giving Sherlock a confused look.

He shook his head quickly, ignoring the faint dizziness that accompanied this, pushing himself to his feet, looking between Sam and John.

"No, from Angelo's. You weren't there, John. It was three weeks ago now." He stared at John, surprised, then felt his eyes widen. "Yes, yes, of course, how could I have missed it? Music, it was the music. That's how he found the first London victims, Clayworth and–" he snapped his fingers, irritated at the lag in his memory. "Aswad. He found them that night, oh it's bloody obvious, isn't it?" he reprimanded himself. "He _told_ me he was playing in the area that night!"

Oh he was flying now, he could feel it all coming back, and it was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, his mind finally taking control back from his blasted body and the blasted concussions and all of the nonsense that accompanied the injuries. He felt focused for the first time in weeks, felt the whole case coming together, spreading out around him, bits and pieces snapping in place like they should be so that he could almost see the pattern, almost hear the other man's thoughts as though they were his own.

"Wait, aren't we talking about the man who attacked you?" John asked. Sam was watching with his eyes narrowed, looking equally as confused.

"Yes, yes," Sherlock said, crossing the room, dismissing the twinges of dizziness, because they were not important right now. He pulled out the files on the first London victims, flipping them open, scanning through them. "Yes, we are. It's the same person, John, Sam. The man who attacked me, the cellist I met at Angelo's, he's our killer."

* * *

Sam and John both stared at him, disbelief scrawled on their features.

"What?" they demanded at the same time.

"This is why, don't you see? I gave him the phrase, his message," Sherlock stabbed a finger at the felt-marked glass and both other men turned to look at it. "I _remember_ now! Brilliant, Sam, brilliant! I'm sure you deserve a raise."

At this, Sam snorted, crossing his arms.

"But how did you know it was him?" John asked.

"I didn't, not right away. He said something about–" Sherlock paused, massaging his forehead with his fingertips, trying to jog his memory. "Something about the orchestra rehearsing to an empty auditorium and how he disliked that. I just said it. Neither of us knew."

He was certain about that, now. He remembered it quite clearly, the pause in the darkness, the moment of jarring realization, the sudden rush of adrenaline evolved to keep him alive. A defence against predators. Different sorts of predators, now.

"How did he find you?" Sam asked.

"He wasn't looking for me," Sherlock said. "I just said, neither of us knew. He was just there."

Sam stared at him and John shook his head, holding his hands up in a universal gesture of surrender, although to what, Sherlock didn't know.

"How is it that you draw these maniacs out?" John muttered.

"I went for the music, John. So did he," Sherlock replied shortly, still scanning the file. "We'll need to track down any sort of concert or show all of these couples attended before they were murdered. And match them up to any performances our killer was giving."

"It would help if we knew who he was," Sam said and Sherlock glanced up to see the younger man watching with crossed arms. "We haven't the DNA results back yet, and he wasn't quite kind enough to leave fingerprints on any surface that wasn't already marked with dozens of fingerprints from audience members. Do you think you could describe him to a sketch artist?"

Sherlock snorted.

"Honestly, Sam, you're such an agent," he complained.

"Uh, yes, I am," Sam agreed. "It _is_ my job."

"I can do even better," Sherlock said, grinning, noting how both other men disapproved of the grin, John's expression dark, Sam's annoyed. "I can give you a sketch artist who actually saw him."


	8. Chapter 8

This time there were four men in the flat, the two she already knew – Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, whose names were easy to remember because one was so unusual and one was so typical in comparison – and two others whom she didn't know.

One of them was older, fairly tall, not quite as tall as Sherlock but close, with greying hair and sharp blue eyes that were narrowed at her not quite suspiciously, more as though they were evaluating her. The other was younger, taller than John but not as tall as the older man, with light brown hair and green eyes that were a shocking hue and were probably that colour because of coloured contacts, she decided. He was grinning at her, as though laughing at some private joke.

The flat smelled very faintly of cigarettes, but some of the windows were open, even though it was late November, as if to chase out the scent.

"Brilliant, you've come," Sherlock said after John had let her in and led her upstairs. He looked different than the last time she'd seen him, but she couldn't quite peg how. Less – focused somehow. If that made sense. More, she realized, like the first time she'd seen him, at Angelo's. Almost three weeks ago.

The flat was still just as much of a disaster as it had been the last time she'd been there, only now there was a mess of pillows on the couch and some blankets that hadn't been there last time. She noted this because it seemed like it was the only surface not littered with papers or files. And those scarves were still out, and the photographs.

And the mirror was marked up with permanent ink. Someone had written on it:

Is anyone listening?

"What's that?" she demanded, momentarily forgetting about the other two men, pointing at the mirror. "Was that the message?"

Sherlock laughed and her eyes snapped back to him. He looked positively gleeful as he nodded.

"Well done!" he said, although it really hadn't been that hard.

"What kind of bloody message is that?" she snapped. "It's mad! Who would kill a bunch of people to ask if anyone is listening? Couldn't he just make a bloody phone call or send an email?"

At this, Sherlock smirked and the younger man, with the fake green eyes, grinned at her. John looked surprised and exchanged a glance with the older man.

"He's a psychopath," Sherlock said, as if this was some sort of valid reason to run about like a mad man murdering innocent people and leaving a message in different shades of blue in scarves. Holly stared at him, disbelieving. "Of course it's mad. Although for a psychopath, it's probably quite reasonable."

"You would know," the older man muttered, but there was no bite in his voice, almost a resigned humour.

"Sociopath, there's a difference!" Sherlock snapped and Holly started. He was a sociopath? What was going on here?

If he noted her reaction, he ignored it, gesturing her to come in further. She did, reluctantly, John closing the door behind her.

"Come on, they don't bite. Nor do I. Well, sometimes, but only John."

"Sherlock!" John snapped, suddenly red in the face, and the green-eyed man started laughing, pressing a fist against his lips, shoulders shaking. Holly noted that Sherlock and John were wearing matching wedding bands, which she had not noticed last time, but probably because the whole situation had been so strange.

Not that this wasn't strange. But it was the same sort of strange as the previous visit, so it was almost becoming – familiar.

"Holly Adams, this," Sherlock gestured at the older man who had "cop" written all over him, if she was any judge, "Is Detective Inspector Lestrade of the Met. And this is Agent Sam Mitchell, from Interpol. Incidentally, yes, that is really his eye colour and he's not wearing contacts."

Holly started at this, uncertain what was surprising to her – the fact that there was a high ranking police officer _and_ an Interpol agent in the flat or the fact that Sherlock had guessed about what she thought about the agent's eyes.

"Not guessed, deduced. You kept looking at him, trying to puzzle something out, but not if you'd seen him before or knew him or anything of that type. And he does have unusual coloured eyes. But not contacts."

"Nope," the Interpol man, Sam, agreed. Interpol people said "nope"?

_It doesn't half whiff of testosterone in here, does it?_ she asked herself. But really, it didn't. She would have expected four cops – well three cops and one Interpol agent – to be jockeying with each other for who was in charge. Even though it was Sherlock and John's flat, it seemed that the older man was the one everyone was going to defer to, somehow.

"And where did you dig her up?" the older man, Lestrade, asked.

"I didn't 'dig her up', Lestrade, show some respect, please. I met her at Angelo's almost three weeks ago. I told you, she's an artist. And she saw the killer, too."

" _What?"_ Holly nearly yelled and Sherlock and Lestrade turned to look at her, Sherlock looking utterly surprised, Lestrade looking surprised and annoyed. She barely noticed this for the cold shock that went through her. "What are you talking about, I saw the killer? Where! What?"

"At Angelo's," Sherlock replied.

"Sherlock, could you maybe have eased into it?" John asked.

"Why?" Sherlock retorted and Lestrade raised his hands in a exasperated gesture. Holly looked between them, clutching her shoulder bag's straps tightly in one fist. Sam stepped forward, holding up a hand to her in a conciliatory or reassuring gesture.

"The man you saw at Angelo's when you saw Sherlock there, the cellist who came in to play, he's the man we're looking for."

She stared at him, stunned, then at Sherlock, then Lestrade, then John.

"What?" she asked again. "Wait– that's– what? That's insane! He was just– he was just playing! Like a normal person! Then you're telling me he just went off and killed a bunch of people?"

"Well he waited two days, so it wasn't 'just'," Sherlock said.

Holly stared at him, her mouth dropping open.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she demanded.

He blinked, looking surprised.

"No, it's just factual," he said. Beside her, John sighed, a weary, put upon sigh.

"Sherlock, you're going to scare the hell out of her," he admonished and, astonishingly, Sherlock pulled a face at him, which John ignored. "Holly, I'm sorry, it's a bit of a shock, I know. Yes, I know he was just playing and seemed normal. That's how psychopaths are. On the surface, at least."

"So, what, is he going to come round and murder me next?" she demanded.

Lestrade shook his head.

"We don't think you're in any danger, because he seems to be targeting couples that may have attended performances he was giving. But we could use your help in finding him. Sherlock says you're a gifted artist and that you drew him once before. Is that right?"

She nodded, feeling somewhat less nervous but by no means unconcerned. There was, apparently, a mad man running about killing people and she'd drawn a sketch of him.

"Oh. You want me to sketch him now," she said.

"Yes!" Sherlock said, actually clapping his hands together like some excited child. "See, I told you she was intelligent!"

"I didn't say I didn't believe you," Lestrade said. "I just pointed out we have our own sketch artists that you could have described him to."

"She'll remember better than I," Sherlock said, scowling slightly as he said this. "Since she didn't take any recent knocks to the head."

Holly gave him a puzzled look but he waved it off. Had he been hit on the head? Maybe that explained the less focused look he had right now.

"This is not standard police procedure," Lestrade admonished.

"Well, I'm not standard police," Sherlock replied.

"Yes, I know. And I'll have my badge back that you nicked, thank you very much."

"Wait, you're _not_ a cop?" she asked Sherlock.

"Consulting detective," Sherlock sniffed in reply.

"Detectives can consult?"

"Only me."

Holly blinked, then turned to John.

"Doctor," he said, looking apologetic. "Sorry."

She turned to Sam, who grinned.

"Really an Interpol agent. I've a badge, and I'd show it to you, but I appreciate you might not believe in badges right now."

Grumbling under his breath, the consulting detective – really? – fished for something in his coat and returned it to Lestrade, who gave him a meaningful glare. Holly shook her head, feeling more than a little out of her depth.

"Well, okay, I can draw him. I'll need somewhere to sit and some space to work. And some tea."

"John, tea," Sherlock said, and John rolled his eyes but went into the kitchen and Holly got the feeling that this wasn't the first time he'd been sent to make tea for an odd group of people. With Sam's help, Sherlock busied himself clearing some space on the overrun desk.

"Is this going to get me into any trouble?" Holly asked Lestrade, who gave her a quick, rueful smile.

"You, not at all. Him," he pointed at Sherlock, who waved a dismissive hand without looking up from the table, "Definitely. Although it never seems to stick. If you can give us an accurate sketch, it might help us actually identify this man and catch him. And that, believe me, will _not_ get you into trouble."

"Well I can definitely give you an accurate sketch," Holly said, feeling certain about at least this one thing.

When a space had been cleared for her and John had brought her tea, for which she thanked him, she pulled out her sketchbook and pencils and set them in front of her.

"You," John said, pointing to Sherlock, "Need to sit down."

This was not explained any further, and Sherlock pulled another face but settled into an armchair after dislodging a stack of files and plopping them on his lap, flipping open the top one. John went into the kitchen to make more tea and Sam went with him, bringing out two mugs a few minutes later. Lestrade settled himself at the other end of the table from Holly, watching vaguely, but this did not bother her.

She thought for a moment, bringing him up in her memory, which wasn't too difficult, because she'd been watching him and drawing him the whole time he'd been playing.

_And he was such a good looking bloke, too_ , she thought with some regret. Bit on the old side for her, though, because he'd looked at least in his thirties. And, apparently, bit on the psychotic-mass-murderer side, too, come to think of it.

Holly let her hand do most of the work, not really thinking, not paying attention to the sounds around her. Occasionally, she'd pick up her tea with her right hand while her left kept up with the lines and the strokes and the fine smears of shading.

It seemed to take almost no time at all, but it always felt that way when she really focused, and she looked up and checked her watch, almost forty minutes had passed. It was a quite good representation of how she remembered the man, she thought, seeing as she hadn't really given him much consideration after that day. Sherlock stood from underneath his pile of files and came to look at it, frowning pensively, then nodding.

"Yes, precisely," he said and gestured for her to pass off her sketchbook, which she did. He held it up for Lestrade, who raised his eyebrows in appreciation of her talents – but she _knew_ she was good – and then for Sam.

"Recognize him from any Interpol shots?" Sherlock asked.

"What am I, some sort of walking database of mug shots for international criminals? No, I do not recognize him, but give me a copy and I'll run it through our system."

"I'll need to take the original of that," Lestrade said. "Can you tear it out for me?"

She did so, passing it off, and he thanked her, then gave her one of his business cards.

"If you even think you see him again, call me immediately. On the mobile number. No matter what time, even the middle of the night. Straight away. Understand?"

Holly nodded, feeling a bit nervous again.

"Can I go now?" she asked, suddenly wanting to get home to her mum and dad and Pudge, their corgi, where things felt normal again and she wasn't surrounded by cops and consulting cops and doctors and creepy messages from serial killers.

"I need your number first," Lestrade said and she gave it to him. Sherlock paid her again and she tried to refuse, but he wouldn't hear it, and Holly ended up taking the money eventually. It was always good to have for art supplies. And she was, after all, now responsible for drawing the portrait of a murderer so the police could catch him. Probably the murderer wouldn't be too keen on that. She deserved some compensation, she decided.

She left the three cop-types bickering about the killer and where he might be and what their next logical course of action was – which seemed somehow inappropriate because it was so amiable in tone – and John let her out, giving her a sympathetic smile.

"It takes some getting used to," he admitted as he waited with her on the sidewalk while she tried to hail a cab.

Holly gave him a shocked look.

"I don't have any plans of getting used to it," she said.

"Right," John said, giving her a cryptic smile. Before she could ask what he meant, a cab had pulled up and John had opened the door for her, thanking her for her time and bidding her good-bye.


	9. Chapter 9

"Where are we going?" John asked as Sherlock tossed him his coat once Lestrade and Sam had left, both of them on their phones to their various superiors or underlings or whoever.

"Out," Sherlock said.

"Oh yes, I couldn't actually deduce that one on my own," John said, to which Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Out where, Sherlock?"

But Sherlock didn't deign to answer, twisting his scarf round his neck and shouldering on his long coat before fishing around in his pockets for his gloves. John sighed, putting on his own scarf and zipping up his jacket. Of course Sherlock's first venture out of the flat since he'd been attacked would be to try and track down information on the selfsame man who attacked him.

The hard look of purpose in Sherlock's eyes told John he was not to be detracted from this, no matter what the doctor might want or think is best or say or do. John supposed he could throw himself bodily in front of the door and Sherlock would just climb out the bedroom window and down the fire escape.

It was best, he considered with resignation, to just go along. After all, he was well versed in emergency care, should it come to that.

Sherlock had taken a snapshot of the picture Holly had drawn before Lestrade had left with it, storing it on his phone. John wondered who among the detective's myriad and surprising contacts they were going to see and if he'd get any sleep that night.

They took their guns, for good measure, and John silently prayed for an excuse to use it against the man, if they found him. He knew he shouldn't – this sort of vigilante justice was what the law was set up against. But he itched to take a shot at the man who had attacked his husband and left him in an unoccupied symphony hall where, if John hadn't called when he had, Sherlock might easily have died.

The thought made him cold and he shuddered, even though they were still inside.

"But I didn't," Sherlock said and John didn't bother pointing out that he hadn't said this out loud.

"You could have," the doctor replied shortly, his words clipped.

"But I didn't. There is no 'what if', John."

"Still," John muttered, finding his keys as Sherlock unlocked the door. The detective raised an eyebrow but said nothing, which was as good as an admission of understanding as John was likely to get in any circumstance.

They left the flat and made their way to Angelo's, which surprised John. He knew that Sherlock wasn't there for a meal, although Angelo, ever hopeful, snagged two menus when they walked in.

"Do you remember the cellist who was here three weeks ago?" Sherlock asked without preamble, waving away the gesture toward a table.

"'Course I do," Angelo replied. "Want to take him up on his offer, do you?"

John frowned in surprise and Sherlock narrowed his eyes.

"Oh, you remember, Sherlock. He said something about starting a duo. I told you that you could play here."

"No," Sherlock said, his voice cool. "I need to know if you've seen him lately."

Angelo looked surprised.

"Well, yes," he said. "Came around two days ago, looking for you, actually. Told him I hadn't seen you in awhile, but that wasn't surprising, because you'd been laid into by some bloke while you were on the job. Well, told him you were on the job, at least."

John froze and Sherlock favoured him with a particularly icy glare.

_Had to blog about that, didn't I?_ John thought, wanting to kick himself for it. But of course, they hadn't know then that the killer and the attacker were one and the same and that Sherlock had actually met him – even if only by chance – once before. And John had been desperately hoping that someone out there on the hazy ether of the Internet would have seen something or know someone who'd seen something. _Anything_ that would lead to the arrest of an unknown attacker who had smashed another man's head against a hard armrest repeatedly.

"What did you tell him about me?" Sherlock demanded.

"Gave him your name, but not your number, since I haven't got it – lost my mobile two weeks ago and haven't got all my numbers reprogrammed yet. But I told him it was probably on your website, since you do consulting."

"Oh, brilliant," Sherlock muttered, pulling out his phone and glaring at it. He sent a message to John, who took out his own phone and found the picture Holly had drawn appended to a text message. Sherlock shut his off, shaking his head and muttering under his breath, something about stupidity and foolishness.

"We'll have to rely on yours, John," he said. "Unless you've put your number up on your blog."

John sighed and rolled his eyes and Sherlock redirected his attention to Angelo.

"At least tell me that you didn't provide him with any information on Holly Adams," he said.

The restaurateur looked surprised.

"No, why would I?" he asked.

"See that you don't," Sherlock snapped. He turned to leave, then spun back, pointing a gloved finger at the other man. "In fact, if he comes back, call the police as soon as you can. And _don't_ mention that I've been here!"

He stalked out, leaving John to tidy up the mess, as per usual.

"What–" Angelo started.

"He's the man who attacked him," John sighed. "And a serial killer. So really, do call the police if you see him."

With that, he darted out, jogging down the block after Sherlock, whose long legs swallowed the distance too quickly. John slowed down once he'd regained his husband and shot a glance at the stony features which shifted from anger to irritation. On almost anyone else, John thought, this would look the same, but it was a noticeable difference on Sherlock.

"Shouldn't we be trying to find out how all the victims are connected?" John asked.

"No," Sherlock replied. "The police can do that, and Sam. It's scarcely relevant any more. We _know_ he found them at performances."

"No, you _think_ he did."

"It's the same thing."

John repressed a sigh, but got a pointed glare aimed his way anyway, and it was made worse by the fact that Sherlock was right.

"So, what, we're going to tear about London all night looking for him?"

"No, that would be pointless and unproductive, John. We're going to see if we can't find some people who've seen him."

"Should I point out that the people who seem him end up dead?"

Sherlock stopped abruptly and spun round to face John, grey eyes blazing in the dusky light and the streetlamps.

" _Some_ people who have seen him end up dead, John. I am not dead, despite your little 'what if' scenarios, Holly Adams is not dead, Angelo is not dead, and a host of other people who must have seen him perform are not dead, or else we'd have a larger number of bodies on our hands."

"We don't know his name," John pointed out.

"No, but we know what he looks like, which is, at present, better than knowing his name. John, think! He went round to Angelo's asking about me because he gathered from our interaction that Angelo and I know one another! He knows from Angelo who knows from your blog that I am not dead nor am I hospitalized and am actually recovering. What he doesn't know is how much I remember nor if I remember him. Given the severity of the concussions he inflicted upon me, he may be safely assuming that I cannot remember, and I wouldn't, if Sam hadn't bought those cigarettes – and don't think I didn't notice you bin them when we left the flat.

"Since he knows I'm alive and not suffering from any serious damage, he knows he's at risk of being caught. But he won't run, because he's also just landed himself a steady job as a musician, which is what he wants."

"How do you know that?" John demanded.

"Remembered it," Sherlock said shortly. "Right before we got to Angelo's."

"Anything else you want to share with me that you remember?" John asked.

"Not right now, no," Sherlock replied. "If he's working in the city as a musician, he can be tracked down via _other_ local musicians. It's not so small a community that I think we'll stumble upon someone who knows him quickly, and he'll have altered his looks by now, but there will be people who have seen him before this and will recognize him. And who will know his name."

"So we're going to go round to what – all the local bands and performances?"

"No, just the pertinent ones, where Clayworth and Aswad and the Gordons went to see the live local shows. That's where we'll find people who recognize him. But it may take some time."

_Brilliant,_ John thought, but refrained from saying it.

* * *

"What is he, invisible?"

Sherlock sighed, but the sound was lost in the noise from the crowd and the music bleeding out from the entrance to the small nightclub.

Hadn't he said this would take time? What did John think "time" meant? Half an hour?

He recognized that John was running low on patience because he was tired, but the cause of that fatigue made no sense – John had got in a good several hours earlier that day and shouldn't be feeling tired, even if they had been at this going on three hours now.

"If you'd like to go back home, you're more than welcome to," Sherlock said calmly, walking toward the alley and stepping into the shadows, pausing a moment to give his eyes some time to adjust.

Behind him, unseen but not unfelt, John gave him a look that bordered on disbelief.

"And leave you on your own to pass out in a darkened alley somewhere?"

"I'm not going to pass out in a darkened alley. Or on a lit street. Or anywhere, John. I feel fine."

"Looked at yourself in a mirror lately?" John snapped.

Sherlock sighed again, rolling his eyes.

"Of course not, John. I haven't been near any mirrors lately."

"Tell me about it," John muttered. "Could we at least go inside one of these places instead of skulking around the back? I could use some food. And something to drink."

Sherlock spun on the spot, stopping so abruptly that John nearly collided with him, giving a reflexive curse. Sherlock held his silence until John was paying full attention to him and narrowed his eyes in the low lighting.

"Do you imagine I am not as invested in apprehending this man as you are, John?" he asked, his words clipped. "You run through your 'he might have died' scenarios but you seem to forget that I have spent the past nine days either in the hospital or at home on the couch with no memory of what happened and unable to work or even think quite clearly and it is _only_ because our killer happens to be a smoker that I was able to regain any of those memories at all. Nine days in which he could be anywhere by now, only we can be fairly certain he's still in London because of Angelo's inability to pick up on anything odd about him."

He ignored the fact that he was fairly certain he hadn't noticed anything that had raised alarms in his own mind as well.

"As for what we're doing, skulking around the back, as you put it, since our killer is a smoker, he will therefore spend at least some of his time at performances smoking, which is not allowed inside any establishments anymore. Given that employees tend to congregate behind these buildings to smoke, and the volume inside these places, our best chance of finding someone who recognizes this man is not inside, but outside. If you dislike the sulking, you are welcome to wait out front and see if you can't spot him or something else that might be useful. And if you're hungry, you need only have said; we passed a fish and chips stand only a block back, but you didn't ask to stop. I know you enjoy thinking it, but I cannot read your mind and I am not interested in eating anything."

He waited while John worked his way through his surprised expression then sighed.

"Sorry," John muttered, bundling his hands into his coat pocket, hunching his shoulders somewhat, but not out of any sense of feeling abashed, not really.

"If you're cold, you could go wait inside," Sherlock pointed out.

"Again, not leaving you on your own," the doctor replied and Sherlock knew that was accurate – it was very much the doctor in John making that decision.

"Then don't waste our time complaining," Sherlock said and turned round again, making his way through the alley to the back of the club, where a darkly-painted door was propped open with a cinder brick and two young women were sitting on similar bricks just outside the patch of light, one of them smoking, one of them not, but both of them chatting with one another.

They looked up hurriedly at the deliberate noise Sherlock made as he stepped toward them, John in his shadow. The non-smoker half rose, extending a protective arm out in front of the smoker, who had frozen, her face a mask of shock and trepidation.

"Quite all right," he assured them. "Police. I need to know if you've seen this man."

He pulled John's phone from his pocket, making sure to stay several steps away and not move forward as he held out the mobile. The non-smoker glared at him suspiciously but he held his ground and she moved forward warily, snagging the phone from his hand, glancing back at the door. Sherlock did not have to be told that assistance in the form of some very large and burly men was only a shout away. He dropped his hand and took a step back for good measure.

The non-smoker glanced at the picture, frowning, then shook her head, passing it down to her companion.

"Cass?" she asked.

The smoking woman shifted her cigarette to her other hand and took the phone, contemplating the sketch.

"No, never– wait. Yeah, I have seen him."

"Where?" Sherlock demanded. "And when?"

"Um, two, three nights ago, maybe. Three, yes. At a club, over in Earl's Court. The Troubadour. He was playing with some other blokes and one woman. A string quartet. Not my normal cup of tea, but they were good. They had a few of them, maybe four, actually, that evening."

"Do you remember the name of his ensemble?"

"No, like I said, there were a few of them."

She handed the phone back.

"What's this all about, then?" she asked.

"Were you paying attention to his music?" Sherlock demanded, ignoring her question.

"Well, yeah, that's why I go. And I did say they were quite good, didn't I?"

"Who were you with?"

"What? With some mates from school from way back. What does that matter?"

"I need the names of your friends who saw him, too."

"What, is he in some kind of trouble?"

"You might say that. Police business."

"Always bloody the same. All right." She gave him the names and Sherlock entered them into John's contact list, ignoring the pointed look he could feel his husband giving him from behind.

Sherlock nodded a thanks, slipping the phone in his pocket, ignoring a second exasperated look from John – he seemed full of those tonight – and walked back down the alley. What did it matter if he kept John's phone or John had it? He couldn't use his own phone, or their cellist-killer would be able to track him using the GPS.

They emerged back onto the street, with the lights and the music from the club and the milling crowd outside, and Sherlock stopped in front of a wall of bills and posters. Most people ignored these, cataloguing them as only background information, and most of the postings were outdated, but that didn't matter. He scanned them anyway, looking for some mention of string quartets playing in the area or in nearby venues, but if there were any, they'd been plastered over by other things. He looked for mentions of the Troubadour, which he hadn't heard of before, but refrained from mentioning because John would probably be appalled by what he considered Sherlock's continuing ignorance about all things pop-culture, excepting Doctor Who, of course.

He found a couple of likely looking flyers and pulled them down, folding them carefully and slipping them into his pocket.

"What are those for?" John asked.

"Later," Sherlock answered vaguely. He turned away, ready to hail a cab, when John's phone buzzed. He pulled it back out, ignoring John's instinctive reaction to reach for it, and answered it, since it was Sam.

"Found out who he is?" Sherlock asked without preamble.

"Yes," Sam said, barely sounding surprised that it was Sherlock answering the phone and thankfully dispensing with any comments about how Sherlock's mobile was turned off.

"Brilliant, because I may have found out _where_ he is."

"How soon can you get over to the Yard?"

"We're on our way right now," Sherlock said, stepping into the street and raising his arm for a cab.

"We'll be waiting for you here," Sam said as the black cab pulled smoothly to a stop beside Sherlock and he opened the door, slipping inside with John right behind him.


	10. Chapter 10

Lestrade gave Sherlock a slightly disapproving look when he swept into the workroom that had been taken over by files, laptops, uniformed officers and a general police mess of coffee mugs and take away. The computer monitors in the room were displaying various files, one of them Holly's sketch, the other, beside it, the photograph of the same man, only younger, six to eight years by Sherlock's quick but accurate estimation.

He ignored the look, because Lestrade appeared more tired than Sherlock himself felt, and everyone was looking tired, so it wasn't as though he had some monopoly on fatigue, which he was barely even feeling, no matter what the faint aches in his lower left leg were telling him.

He made rapid assessments of all the officers in the room, out of habit, but ignored this as background noise in his mind, because it wasn't entirely relevant, but could become so later.

"His name is Thomas Michael Bainbridge," Lestrade said as Sherlock shucked his gloves and John half-collapsed into a chair, a bit over-dramatically, Sherlock thought.

"Yes, I see that, on the monitors," the detective replied coolly. He took a moment to evaluate the picture – a fairly ordinary looking man, good bone structure, attractive features, sharp, intelligent brown eyes that were not entirely revealing the extent of that intelligence and not at all revealing the stark madness that lay behind them. So, sometime after he'd started killing then, although Sherlock suspected that Bainbridge had never really let that show as an adult. Probably as a child, before he learned to move through the world unremarked upon.

He wondered suddenly who had taught this man to play the cello. He'd said something at Angelo's about his mother teaching him, but it could well have been a lie. It sat ill with Sherlock, making a chill course down his spine, that they might share something so personal with each other.

The photograph was not a police mug shot, so Bainbridge had never been arrested, at least not as an adult. Most likely, Sherlock thought, he'd run into troubles with the law prior to turning eighteen, but for minor things, vandalism, fights that would have involved excessive ferocity but in which the other fighter – victim – would not want to press charges, that sort of thing. Nothing that would pin anything too damning on him, which would allow him to navigate a system not at all designed to catch people like him before they moved up to murder.

It looked more like some sort of work photograph, perhaps for an ID badge, indicating that some of the trouble had traced him back at least to a former employer, but probably not while Bainbridge had still been working there.

"Odd jobs for someone of his intelligence," Sherlock observed. "But perhaps not for a musician. Not janitorial work, because that would damage his hands, nor anything involving lifting, for the same reason. Security for the most part, I expect."

Lestrade gave him a surprised look, but nodded.

"Not for some time, though. At least not the past year, but probably longer. He's been travelling until recently, playing where he could find jobs, which is why we have a string of murders from here to Sheffield."

"Right," Lestrade agreed. "His last permanent employment was as a part-time night watchman at a storage facility. That was seven years ago. He's thirty-two now, and there's been nothing on his National Insurance number since."

"Then he's got at least one alias," Sherlock said curtly. "Because he told me he recently found a steady job. And travelling to perform might result in some payment under the table, but there's no guarantee of that, and we can safely assume some of this would have been properly recorded for tax purposes."

"You're right," Donovan said, coming into the room, holding up a file as if to offer proof.

"I'm always right," Sherlock replied smoothly.

She shot him a glare without much bite in it, which he ignored. When was the last time he'd seen her? He couldn't properly remember – it must have been after decoding the killer's message, but pieces of the days immediately preceding the attack were missing or choppy or perhaps even invented.

He raised an eyebrow at her – she looked sharper than usual, better dressed, which was saying something, since she'd always taken care of her appearance, her hair was shorter, recently cut, not by much, but enough, her make-up was more carefully applied but she was wearing less of it, and she smelled subtly different. New scent, different perfume. She appeared less tired, too, at least compared to the last time he thought he'd seen her.

"This just came back from Sheffield," she said, ignoring Sherlock in favour of Lestrade, which seemed somewhat unnecessary, even if Lestrade was her boss. "They did some digging after we sent up the sketch and it turns out that yes, someone _does_ remember hiring him for a performance, a local art coffee house. Under the name of Brian Dunelan. Still waiting on anything from Codnor and Bicester."

"Good work, Sally. Sherlock, care to fill us in on what you've been up to?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes at the sarcasm but provided Lestrade and the other officers with a brief synopsis of what he'd found.

"Brilliant," Lestrade said, blue eyes gleaming with that familiar look that indicated someone had been cornered. "Jameson, get on it, check with the club, find out who was performing three nights ago and how to contact them. If we're lucky, someone will have seen him even more recently than three days ago, or the club will have some sort of contact information for him."

A constable nodded and rose to leave, stepping around Sam coming in, looking tired as well, Sherlock noted, as though it were contagious. He deposited his laptop unceremoniously on the table, dislodging some files as he did so, and listened to the conversation.

"It could be falsified, couldn't it?" John asked. "I mean, if I were running about murdering people, I wouldn't want to leave my number just lying about for anyone to reach me."

"He's using aliases," Sherlock said. "And he wants to get paid. Without being in contact, he can't get work, and he wants to work. It's what he, for lack of a better word, loves, and it's also how he found his victims. And he doesn't leave living victims behind, nor does he ever have any witnesses, insofar as we can establish."

"Actually he had one," Sam said, flipping open his laptop. "I got in contact with some colleagues with the sketch and someone actually did recognize him. Yes, don't say it, I know I didn't, but I've never dealt with him before. He's wanted in Ireland, on a break-and-enter charge in Dublin. He broke into a flat, although the only reason we know this is because the young woman who occupied the flat was home sleeping and he made a run for it when she woke up and started yelling. Wasn't expecting her. But the locks were picked so expertly that they weren't damaged at all. So we know how he gets into his victims' homes now."

"Lock picking, identify forging and getting away with murder," Sherlock mused. "No wonder he's not even been on anyone's radar until he put himself there. And on his own. How does a man like this not get picked up by a criminal organization? Or perhaps," he added, shooting a look at Sam, "by Interpol?"

"Oh, please," Sam said. "Robbing a convenience store at fifteen is hardly on par with this. I never hurt anyone, let alone went on a killing spree."

" _Six_ stores, Sam. In two different countries."

Sherlock grinned at Lestrade and Donovan's shocked looks as they stared at the Interpol agent. John rolled his eyes at Sherlock, but his lips twitched into a grin and Sherlock was glad to see a smile touch John's face again, given how tired and tense he'd been lately.

"Thank _you_ , Sherlock," Sam said pointedly. "I didn't make a life's hobby out of it. As Bainbridge seems to have with the murders, you know."

"It's not as though you're alone," Sherlock said, taking a moment to enjoy this. "Sergeant Donovan was apprehended twice for shoplifting as a teenager and Lestrade –"

"Enough!" the DI interjected forcefully, shooting a very pointed glare at Sherlock. Donovan shook off her shock and pursed her lips. "I could draw up a pretty good list of your offences, Sherlock, and that's only the ones we know about. Need I remind you we have an actual murderer on the loose?"

"I haven't forgotten," Sherlock said. "But it can't fall to me to apprehend him. He's met me and will likely be surprised to see me up and about, but it won't last long. And he has no interest in me as a victim – again – because I don't fit his profile. The only reason he attacked me at all was because I recognized and cornered him."

"Right, you're going nowhere near the scene when we track him," Lestrade said, with which Sherlock privately disagreed, "But we need to know _why_ he's targeting his victims. Why them? Why these couples?"

"Because they weren't listening," Sherlock said simply.

"What do you mean?"

"The woman who recognized him, she said that she was listening to him play because that's why she'd gone. But she's a musician herself, so she would naturally be more inclined to listen to others' music. By all accounts, all five couples who make up his recent string of victims were happily married. When you go out with your wife, do you pay more attention to each other, or what's happening around you?"

"Depends," Lestrade said. "Could be either."

Sherlock nodded; he was a little bit astonished to realize that because he and John did this, they had something in common with other couples, as though they were _normal_ , but he kept this to himself because it wouldn't do for that to get around.

"Exactly. So he was choosing couples who were paying more attention to each other the particular nights on which he saw them than they were to him. Hence the message."

"That's mad," Donovan interjected. "There would have been any number of other people watching him!"

"Of course it's mad," Sherlock sighed. "He's a psychopath. Probably this resonated poorly with him and he didn't focus on who _was_ listening, but who _wasn't_ listening."

"All right," she conceded, and Sherlock could tell she believed him, understood, because she dealt with the results of this sort of madness – as well as many other types – every day. "But even if we catch him, we've got nothing to link him to these murders. Even if he _was_ performing in all of these places and the victims attended his shows, it's circumstantial."

"Quite right, but you _can_ arrest him for attacking me. I can identify him and he will be on the security footage from the Barbican somewhere. And you have the identification from Dublin, which I realize you can't prosecute here, but it should be enough for a search warrant. And he's a serial killer. He _will_ have kept trophies."

"The crown prosecutors can worry about making the charges stick once we get there," Lestrade interrupted. "First, we have to catch him. We know who his target victims are, so once we've been able to track him down, we can get him there. Because I'm not holding my breath that he'll be living at the residence he lists on his employment forms. Or he'll have a post office box. They always do."

Sherlock arched an eyebrow at Sam.

"What? Not a chance! I'm done with under cover operations and I don't have any authority to arrest anyone, so fat lot of good that would do us, and she's a _nurse_ , not a cop, so there's no way in hell I'm dragging her into this! Not me."

"She? She who?" Lestrade demanded.

"Never mind," Sam snapped.

"Fine, Donovan and her new man then," Sherlock said. "He's a police officer."

"What?" Donovan demanded. "How the hell –" She clamped her mouth shut then, glaring at him.

"You're taking more care with your appearance and you look a far sight better than you have in some years – getting rid of Anderson's done you a world of good. You don't look tired, but you _also_ don't look bothered by being here or guilty at the fact that you had to leave someone behind, nor are you checking your phone continuously, so this is someone who both understands the hours and the demands and works them himself. You don't feel the need to explain or justify yourself and the necessities of the job. But he's not here, or people would know and have already begun talking. Another station, probably not too far, one of the others in Central London I'd guess, and at least your rank, if not higher, I think detective, but possibly also a sergeant, not someone _too_ high ranking, since you're only irritated that I've figured it out, not desperately hoping I'll shut up and not spill some big secret."

She sighed, rolling her eyes, but looked, of all things, slightly pleased.

Jameson chose this time to come back and glanced around in mild confusion at the tableau of expressions – most of them amused, Donovan's still somewhat annoyed – around him.

"Got them, sir. They're a string quartet, three men and two women. I ran all of them down, one of the NINs came back as belonging to someone who died fourteen years ago. Brian Dunelan. He's got one that works. No address though, only a PO box."

"Bloody knew it, didn't I?" Lestrade muttered. "Give me some good news, Constable."

"Yes, sir. They're playing tomorrow night, same place. Eight o'clock start."

Lestrade turned to Donovan.

"Well, Sergeant, who is he?"

Sherlock grinned and Donovan sighed.

"Detective Sean Hillary, sir. At the Paddington Green station."

"Good," Lestrade said, pulling out his mobile, "He's just come up for temporary reassignment."


	11. Chapter 11

They had been sent home, Lestrade treating them like disobedient little children – again! Sherlock was fairly certain he'd done this recently, although the memory was a bit hazy. Nonetheless, he felt indignant despite the fact that he actually strongly disliked the tedious planning and had nothing to do with ensuring the temporary transfer of a detective from another station to Scotland Yard. Even Sam had left, since the preparation did not necessitate Interpol's presence and he'd done what his job required of him.

"Look, you decoded his message and identified him," Lestrade had said. "And got yourself badly injured in the process. And, like you said, he'll recognize you, and you're not an actual police officer, so your ability to arrest him is non-existent. You've done the puzzling work, Sherlock. That's what you _do._ Go home and get some sleep."

So Sherlock sat in the cab, slouched down, arms crossed, fuming silently because Lestrade had had the gall to be right _and_ Sherlock knew it. He muttered unhappily to himself – he couldn't mutter unhappily to John, because the doctor had dozed off in the seat beside him, head nodding toward his right shoulder, jerking automatically back up at intervals.

Sherlock stared at him, then sighed pointedly, but John failed to wake up. So he spent the cab ride in silence, glaring out the window, becoming increasingly irritated that he was, in fact, feeling tired, and that John would probably gloat about this or lecture him on the benefits of a regular sleep pattern or just force him into bed and snuggle up with him. The latter was made worse by the fact that Sherlock actually enjoyed this, and was not in the mood for being reasonable and appreciating the things he enjoyed.

"John, wake up," he said shortly when they arrived back at the flat. He paid the cabbie as John raised his head groggily and looked around. Sherlock rolled his eyes. How had he functioned in Afghanistan if he was always disoriented when he woke up? Never mind that he was waking up in the back of a cab and probably hadn't intended to fall asleep.

When they got into their flat, John shed his jacket gratefully and sagged onto the couch, leaning his head back and sighing.

"If you're so tired, you should to bed," Sherlock said.

John raised his head again, giving Sherlock a rueful look. The detective removed his coat with a little more decorum and hung it with his scarf, tucking his gloves into his pockets.

"What, and let you figure out what disguise you're going to wear tomorrow and how you're going to get in all by yourself?"

Sherlock turned away from his coat, and stared.

"I may not know what you're planning to wear or do, Sherlock, but I know _you._ After almost three years being married, give me at least a little credit."

Sherlock started to protest the last statement, but there was a light in John's eye that told him that the doctor did not feel slighted. He gave a quick, almost pensive sigh and cocked an eyebrow at his husband.

"Besides, do you think I'd let you go on your own?" John asked.

"Yes, I mustn't forget my physician," Sherlock commented dryly.

"Not that," John said. "Not fair if you get a go at this guy and I don't. Why do you look so surprised? You can snip at me about my 'he might have died' scenarios if you want, but it's true. And he hurt you."

_And you want to hurt him back_ , Sherlock thought.

"How very primal of you, John."

John shrugged, spreading his hands, unapologetic about it. He had, after all, shot and killed a murdering cabbie the first case they'd worked on, barely knowing Sherlock at all.

_Murdering cabbie, murdering acrobat, murdering consulting criminal, murdering cellist_ , Sherlock mused. _At least they all had jobs as well._

He recognized that thought as absurd, which probably indicated he needed to sleep, and shook it away, crossing the room to perch on the back of his armchair, facing John.

"I have no intentions of going into the club," he said.

John blinked, surprised.

"What?" he demanded.

"He's managed to murder at least ten people without anyone so much as spotting him and noting that he seemed out of place. He alone knows how many more people he's killed. He managed to attack me without drawing any attention to himself whatsoever despite the fact that there was an entire symphony orchestra practicing not a hundred metres away from us. He's only be seen once, because he misjudged whether someone was home or not. He's an expert lock picker, and he broke into the homes of his latest victims while they were there, indicating he can do this without being detected as well."

"You think he's going to run."

"Of course he's going to run," Sherlock rejoined. "He's not the 'come along quietly' type, John. He's been successful with this his entire adult life up until this point, so why should he quit now? He knows his way in and out of places. For every place he goes, he will have at least one escape route."

"It will be surrounded by police," John pointed out.

"Yes," Sherlock said. "And it may be that he'll take our bait with Donovan and Detective Hillary, although it may also be he identifies them as police officers. What is the term that the detectives on your American crime drama use? They will be 'made'? If he's avoided the law this long, he's got good instincts for doing so. No need for him to stop using them, especially now."

"And, so, what, we're going to catch him when they can't?"

"If they can't," Sherlock admitted. "I will give them at least some credit for being able to apprehend criminals, or else we would have empty prisons."

John's lips twitched into a smile.

"If you want to help, we need to look at the lay out of the building for service entrances, emergency exits, windows, et cetera."

"And where are we going to find all of that for a music club?" John asked.

"Online," Sherlock replied, as though it was obvious, because it was obvious.

"Oh and we can just access building blueprints that way, eh?"

"If we know where to look. Which I do."

"All right, fine," John said. "But I need some sleep first, Sherlock, I'm shattered. And you do, too."

Sherlock waved a hand dismissively; he'd been expecting precisely this, of course.

"I meant it when I asked you if you'd looked at yourself in a mirror lately. And that was what? Two hours ago. Go do it."

"How I look is hardly important."

"It is to me," John said. "And not just because I enjoy looking at you. The doctor bit of me is raising his voice rather loudly inside my head, so just humour me and do it, will you?"

Sherlock considered resisting but sighed and rolled his eyes, pushing himself from his chair instead. He went into the bathroom and heard John's footsteps behind him a moment later.

He was used to looking pale, he'd always been pale, particularly because his hair contrasted so sharply with his skin tone. And he'd seen himself following previous injuries, like the crash, where he hadn't been pale, but an interesting patchwork of blues and reds and purples and blacks and browns.

_Ashen_ was not a term he'd ever applied to himself before. But the image staring back at him was definitely grey. There was no getting around it.

John stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed with what Sherlock considered somewhat of a smug and superior look on his face.

"Sometimes I am right," John said. "And just earlier today– sorry, yesterday now, you were complaining that you don't get to sleep with me anymore. Well, now you can. Because if I stay up for any more than two minutes at this point, I'm going to fall asleep standing up. Give yourself a few good hours, Sherlock, and then you'll do even better at finding the building's weak spots. You want to catch him? This is the best way to do it."

Sherlock huffed, turning away from his far-too-pale reflection.

"Oh, fine, John," he said. "But don't let this go to your head. I'm only doing this because of the concussions, not because I have any faith in your sleep-is-brilliant notions."

"Against you?" John said, a wry chuckle in his voice, "Sherlock, I just take my victories when I can."

* * *

"I don't like you like that," John said.

Sherlock sighed, rolling his eyes.

John felt jumpy, and had done all day. This was absolutely absurd and ridiculous. What were they doing? They were planning on hanging about, looking for the man who had assaulted Sherlock, who was responsible for ten murders that they knew about and Lord only knew what else. Some niggling little voice at the back of his mind suggested that this was a matter best left to the police.

Amazing, after all this time, that he could still manage to think that, even despite himself.

But a larger, more conscious part of him didn't want to just sit back and wait. He wanted to _help._ He wanted to be there.

He understood perfectly that this was precisely the same vigilante justice he wanted to avoid, but couldn't help it.

And, frankly, there was no stopping Sherlock, so it was also a matter of ensuring his husband wasn't attacked or injured yet again. And, he reminded himself many times, if the police were able to apprehend this killer who had proven to be slippery as an eel, then all the better. If they weren't, John was certain Sherlock could.

He wasn't very happy about that, but he was certain.

So he'd spent the day arguing with himself over his own lack of responsible behaviour while simultaneously poring over blueprints of the club and looking for possible ways of escape.

Sherlock had ruled out fire escapes, because they were alarmed, which would only draw attention. Bainbridge, Sherlock had pointed out, would try and slip away unnoticed if he could, rather than just make a run for it when approached by the police. John didn't like that, and wondered how many officers would actually be outside the building. He wished he could call Lestrade, but that would alert the DI as to what they were up to, and would probably result in some hurried if not entirely legal house arrest.

There was a problem with three major roads in the immediate area, although thankfully not particularly close tube stations. Sherlock had ruled out Bainbridge going for the tube to begin with anyway, because they were monitored by CCTV cameras and the fares would slow him down, and had settled on cabs, or on foot. Or a mix of both, then perhaps the tube. After all, the man did like to think in puzzles.

He had that in common with Sherlock, it seemed.

"It hardly matters if you like it or not," Sherlock replied.

"I know," John muttered. "I just don't."

And he didn't. He was used to Sherlock in his fine wool suits and silk shirts, which suited him so well, although occasionally he got lucky and Sherlock wore jeans, but they were always obviously expensive and may well have been tailor-made for him. He was not used to the faded jeans with the scuffed cuffs, what looked like some unknown department store brand, the grey jumper, the bomber jacket over top, the glasses – which were, as far as John could tell, just glass, no prescription – and the ball cap with the letters NY stitched into it. Sherlock tucked his dark hair into the cap so that only a few wispy curls escaped from the back. The wincing as he did so told John the fit of the hat was bothering his injuries, but John didn't comment.

He stole one of John's black scarves and wound it absently around his neck, foregoing his usual crisp way of wearing it.

"Where do you get all this stuff anyway?"

"Internet," Sherlock replied. "I store it upstairs. It's not my fault you don't go through anything up there, you know."

John just rolled his eyes, shouldering his jacket and putting on his newest scarf. It was hard to completely disguise a six-foot-two man who was all pale angles, but it worked well enough. Although the killer was likely to see through the guise quickly enough, if only because he was unnecessarily bright in John's opinion.

They took the tube down to the club, and John was thankful it was dark, because they'd be less easily spotted that way. Sherlock kept their pace slow as they walked from the nearest tube station, as though they had nowhere to go and weren't concerned about anything, and John tried to pretend that his tension was actually cold, bundling his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders somewhat. It helped that he was actually cold and wondered how Sherlock wasn't, for all his acting that he was. John knew the difference, with Sherlock.

"Stop here," the detective said quietly just up the block from the club, putting a hand lightly on John's arm. John stepped aside, toward the building they had stopped in front of, letting another group of pedestrians go past, the four of them talking and laughing. Sherlock leaned up against the sandstone façade and looked around, adopting a bored expression and John checked his watch.

"Almost eight," he said.

"I know," Sherlock replied and John rolled his eyes. Of course he knew. "Quiet, let me pick out the plain clothes."

John nodded and tried to do the same, and he thought maybe he spotted one or two.

"Five," Sherlock said under his breath. "Four men, one woman." He pointed them out quietly, one at a time. An off-duty cabbie eating a sandwich in his car, seat leaned back slightly. A man sitting at a bus station, tapping his foot impatiently. A woman on her cell phone, looking annoyed, carrying on a snappish conversation that, for all the world, appeared to be real. Two other men taking refuge in a doorway, smoking, shoulders hunched against the cold like John's.

"We'll go back up the block and come round back," Sherlock said.

"And won't they have people back there?"

"Of course. We'll just engage in some typical behind-a-club behaviour," Sherlock said, turning to walk away, John following quickly.

"You'd better not be talking about smoking, because a: you really, really don't need that right now and bee: I'm not doing it."

"No, of course not, John. I don't even have any cigarettes."

John stopped up short and Sherlock paused, then turned back to him curiously.

"Well come on, we haven't got all night!"

"I am _not_ shagging you in a back alley while waiting for a serial killer to escape the police!" he hissed.

Sherlock stared at him, then grinned.

"No, John, that was not was I was suggesting. You underestimate your own abilities if you think that would not distract me. I'm talking about snogging."

"Oh, well, in that case," John said and Sherlock rolled his eyes, but a smile still twitched at his lips. The problem with Sherlock, John thought – _one_ of the problems with Sherlock – is that he could do that on a case and still manage to think. It didn't do wonders for John's ability to string a coherent thought together.

"You can either come with me, or stay here," Sherlock said with an amused look. "It will probably be more rewarding for you if you join me."

John took a turn rolling his eyes, but fell into step with his husband again, shaking his head, ignoring Sherlock's grin in the light from the streetlamps.

* * *

"How bloody long do you think this will take?" John hissed, shifting back and forth from foot to foot, trying not to feel the cold he felt sure was taking up residence in his bones.

"Will you hush up? It's only been twelve minutes. I'm estimating an hour."

"An hour?" John whispered, then muttered a curse.

"Did the last ten minutes fail to warm you up?" Sherlock said with an evil smile.

They'd installed themselves behind the club, in the alley, near enough to see the service entrance and the fire escape for the floors above, and to have picked out the police office who was covering back here. They'd eliminated themselves from her sharp and suspicious gaze when Sherlock had pushed John up against a wall and kissed him for ten straight minutes, all the while, John knew, evaluating the whole scene.

John had tried to think of other things during that time, like how the club was smaller than he'd imagined, and it didn't look like the kind of place that was easily escapable. And how someone had come out for a cigarette at one point, but the smell wasn't the same, and it wasn't their man – especially given it was a waitress.

He got derailed a few times and tried to keep the moans to a minimum, or at least a minimum of volume, and resisted the urge to bite Sherlock's tongue for laughing silently at John's reactions.

"We can do it again, if you'd like," Sherlock offered.

"I need a few minutes to cool down," John said.

"I thought being cold was the problem."

John just sighed, rolling his eyes and huddled against the wall, against Sherlock, and waited. Sherlock resorted to the snogging whenever the policewoman looked at them suspiciously and eventually, John thought, she probably got tired of listening to them, or decided they were also undercover and taking their assignment very seriously.

People came and went from the back, mostly smokers, and John wondered if maybe the police inside had just arrested him and the woman outback hadn't been told, or was waiting on something else. Then Sherlock stiffened and hissed, nodding toward the building in the darkness.

A blond man in a sharp suit holding a martini and on his mobile stepped out. He scarcely glanced at the policewoman, who had been maintaining her cover by occasionally taking a slow drag of the cigarette that burned between her fingers, replacing it as needed.

"That's him," Sherlock said.

John blinked, and saw the policewoman realize it at the same time. The blond hair, actually almost the same shade as his own, John thought, was distracting enough, but so was the suit, the glasses – Sherlock not being the only one who had thought of it, apparently – and the distracted phone conversation and the martini glass.

Without even looking as if he was thinking about it, the man dropped the glass from his right hand and slugged the police officer. She went down hard, so much so that John winced, and Sherlock was pushing himself away from the wall, running toward the building.

Bainbridge looked up toward the sounds in the darkness and seemed, if anything, mildly surprised, not at all panicked.

And when he saw Sherlock, he actually grinned.

"Knew you'd be listening!" he shouted and John cursed, because then he was dropping his cell phone and clattering onto the trash bins and clearing the fence.

Why couldn't they ever just give up and come quietly?

Sherlock didn't even hesitate, following the man's lead, and John scrambled to keep up, hindered somewhat by his height, but helped by his military experience. He'd wondered, all those years ago, why having to scale a wall had been part of the training. He'd used the skill in Afghanistan. He'd just never imagined it would be helpful to him in the alleys in London.

He gained Sherlock fast, feeling his adrenaline spike and course through his system, bright and hot, bringing back all of the instincts he'd honed over years in the army and years working with Sherlock. Compared to Afghanistan, the mazes of alleys in London were actually quite tame.

Bainbridge was running toward a main road, but not, John realized, the one onto which the club fronted. No, he'd know not to go there, if he knew there was a police officer waiting for him out back. Now John wished they had told Lestrade that they were there, so as to call in their location.

Bainbridge had a decent lead on them and was dodging his way through the alleys expertly, despite the shadows that were thicker in some places, thinner in others. Not looking back, John noticed. He wasn't an amateur at this, he wasn't increasing his drag by turning his head, having to slow his speed to keep from stumbling up. He was _listening_ to where they were, and keeping his eyes on where he was going.

_What, does he practice for this?_ John snapped to himself as the man scrambled almost too easily over another fence, dropping out of sight. John was hauling himself up before Sherlock, damned if he was going to let his height slow him down and heard Sherlock land running behind him.

They wove and dodged their way through alleys, startling one other couple who had the same thing in mind that Sherlock had, except without the police chase element to it, getting hissed at by a couple of feral cats. Bainbridge tipped a trash bin once as he went by it, but John had noticed the movement when it had started and cleared it easily, Sherlock right beside him.

They burst onto Finborough Road, John breathing hard, while Sherlock's breathing barely seemed strained, he noticed. Bainbridge dodged a walking couple, who stopped and turned to stare after him, startled, and John cursed, putting on extra speed, calling up the reserves from the adrenaline he could feel speeding his heart.

There were too many people here. Each one of them a potential hostage. They knew Bainbridge had a least one gun, and that he was expert at using it. John's army training took over, backed by his old rugby experience and for a moment, he drew past Sherlock, who gave a grunt but only redoubled his own speed.

Too many people, too many cabs. John kept his eyes on Bainbridge, who was weaving between pedestrians gracefully, still not looking back at them, not even bothering to check if he was still being pursued. His dyed hair was highlighted by the pools of street lamps, darker when he crossed the brief shadows and brighter again when he was running beneath the lights.

John growled when he saw a cab pull up and a young woman got out, apparently not even noticing the chase, because Bainbridge had redirected his attention to it momentarily with a quick, hard look on his face.

_No!_ John thought, putting on the last burst of speed he could manage. Bainbridge dodged another couple with a stroller and then a man walking a large dog, and headed for the edge of the pavement. The cab began to pull away, and John felt a flash of relief, but it stopped again a few feet up when Bainbridge raised a hand urgently.

John was steps behind him, so close he could reach out, just grab him, almost. He could jump and tackle from here, he thought, but it would land them in the road. He was close enough to jump for the cab door, though, if he had to.

Bainbridge dodged again, startling John by not going for the cab, but darting into the street. John cursed, barely slowing, then started when the man turned to face him, a broad grin on his face, a knowing glint in his eyes. John got ready to leap, all the small actions of bracing himself and tensing his muscles so familiar from the long ago years of rugby.

They had him.

"JOHN! NO!"

And he was yanked off of his feet, two strong arms around his waist, the sudden, forceful grip knocking the air out of him so that he huffed and gasped, falling back hard against Sherlock, toppling both of them back onto the sidewalk, into the man with the dog, and there was the unmistakable sound of a horn blaring and something very large and metallic hitting something smaller and human.


	12. Chapter 12

It was several agonizing, crushing seconds before he could breathe again, then he sucked in a gasp, which sent spasms through the muscles in his chest and stomach, and John gasped again, this time unintentionally, trying to sit up, to roll himself into a ball, but he was tangled in Sherlock's arms and definitely _not_ in a good way.

He registered the sounds of screams and horns and some squealing tires and tried to sit up fast, then remembered again that he was tangled, and dislodged himself. Sherlock was sitting up as well, looking stunned, one hand on his head, his fake glasses knocked off and askew on the concrete, his ridiculous ball cap on the ground a foot or so away, his hair taking the opportunity to curl all over the place. He blinked a few times, grey eyes a bit unfocused and John felt his blood go cold. He pushed himself to his feet fast, ignoring the chaos behind him with only a little effort, because although he'd trained to respond to that kind of thing in Afghanistan, his brain also knew the sound he'd just heard very clearly indicated death. And Sherlock was looking too glassy-eyed for someone who had just had two concussions.

"You right idiot, let me see–" John started and Sherlock's expression cleared.

"I didn't hit my head!" the detective snapped. "You knocked the wind out of me."

"And you did the same to me! What the hell–"

Sherlock clambered to his feet, features blazing now.

"What the hell, John?" he demanded, jabbing a finger toward the road, where pedestrians were flocking and motorists were either getting out of their cars to gawk or honking impatiently. " _What the hell_? There was a bloody _bus_ , John! Don't you pay attention to anything? He was going for the bus, not the cab! He knew he wasn't getting away, but he wasn't getting caught! You could have been killed!"

John knew he shouldn't, really shouldn't, not here, not now, but couldn't stop himself.

"Could have?" he yelled back, not even attempting to control his volume. "Could have! That sounds _exactly_ like 'what if', Sherlock! Do you mean, what if you hadn't grabbed me? Do you mean, what if I'd been just a bit too far ahead for you to catch me? Do you mean, what if that had been _me_?"

Sherlock started, shocked by either the words or the force of John's voice, or both, took a step back and stared.

"Yes! Yes! See, now I know you get it! He could have bloody killed you, Sherlock, if I hadn't called when I did, you might have just passed out and bloody well died in a symphony hall where you weren't supposed to be and who _knows_ how long it would have been until someone found you? That's your 'you could have been killed'! What, do you think I don't know what I was getting into? That doesn't mean I have to like it, and good God, even though you didn't die, it could have been anything – brain damage! How would you like that? Hearing problems? Blindness? Memory problems? Any of it? Swelling in your brain that also could have killed you! So next time you want to lecture me on the 'what ifs' and the so-called over protectiveness and the trying just to get you to bloody _slow down_ when you've been knocked about, remember this! In fact, I'm going to just keep reminding you about it in case you decide it isn't _important_ enough for that hard drive of yours to retain! And, actually I'm going to–"

"I'm not going to forget you were almost hit by a bus, John," Sherlock said softly, and the low tone brought John up short. He stopped, breathing hard, and managed a glare, feeling unbalanced. Then annoyed that Sherlock could still do that to him when he was pumped full of adrenaline and anger and indignation.

He stared at his husband a moment, fighting for some words.

"Right," John said. "See that you don't."

He raked a hand through his hair then turned, in part just to have something else to do, in part because he was a former army surgeon and there was a pretty unpleasant scene in front of them. Most of the passengers and the bus driver were off the bus, yelling, but seemed unharmed, and, ah yes, there were the police heading toward the scene through the press of onlookers, and sirens in the distance.

He shouldered through the crowd, confident Sherlock would follow him if only to keep tabs on him, ignoring muttered protests and people craning to see what had happened, ignoring the slight discomfort he always felt at seeing this kind of carnage.

Bainbridge was definitely dead. No one's spine should twist that way while they were alive. He'd probably died instantly, John assessed quickly, clinically. He pushed his way to the body, which was surrounded by morbid gawkers, and crouched down, rounding his glare on them, directing all the frustrated relief and now-useless adrenaline intensity at them.

"Right, back off!" he snapped. "Back off! I'm a doctor!"

"I don't think that'll help, mate," someone commented from the crowd.

_Audience_ , John thought vaguely and almost smirked, then felt sort of ill.

He _had_ almost been hit by a bus.

He glanced back at the bus, which was stopped now, and saw the faint dents in the front. Hadn't done much damage to the vehicle, but Bainbridge had been banking on the weight and speed doing damage to him.

_And how many people did he kill that we'll never know about?_ John thought. _No wonder he did this. We'll never have him. He's won. In his own mind, at least._

"You two!" a familiar voice snapped. "I might have known!"

John looked up at the ring of strangers' faces, and Sherlock's, and met Lestrade's eyes, which were a bright blue in the street lamps and particularly blazing.

"What the hell did you do?" the DI demanded, then angrily ordered some of the onlookers to back off even more before barking a command at any of the police officers nearby to get people out of there.

"We–" Sherlock started, but John cut him off, pointing a finger at him.

"Shut up," he said and, for once, Sherlock did, looking so startled that he cut himself off in mid sentence. "We were waiting for him, round back, with your policewoman. Whom he punched, by the way, and so she's probably in need of some medical attention."

"Are you going to tell me why you were waiting round back for him?"

"Because," John said shortly.

"Because?" Lestrade said. "That's not an explanation, John! Not for anyone over the age of three!"

"Because he was going to see you and realize he was caught," John said and Sherlock scowled at having the spotlight stolen from him. John gauged that he'd run out of shut-up-by-shock and turned back to the body, fairly uselessly, since it was not going to stop being a body anytime soon.

"And you just bloody knew that, did you?" Lestrade snapped.

"No, I didn't 'just bloody know that', I deduced it," Sherlock replied in his obvious-isn't-it voice. "He's an expert and getting in and out unseen, Lestrade! And at not getting caught! I had a personal interest in seeing him apprehended."

"Well, that won't happen now, he's bloody dead!"

"Yes, that's rather evident."

"Dead criminals don't do me any good!"

"Are you sure?" Sherlock asked, and John rolled his eyes at the actual curiosity in his husband's voice. "It must be less paperwork. Certainly less taxpayer money."

"No, it is _not_ less paperwork, and I am not standing here arguing with you about it! Why did he run into a bus?"

"He let a bus run into him," Sherlock corrected.

"Whatever!"

"So he'd not be caught. He spent his whole life not being caught. Why start now? It was the end of the line and he was aware of it. He chose to make it permanent."

"And if you hadn't–"

"If we hadn't been there, he'd have slipped through your grasp again and he'd be gone," Sherlock sighed. "At least ten murders, three sets of which went cold. And if you find and search his flat, I'm sure you'll find evidence tying them to him, as well as older ones. If you want to put some cases to rest, that is."

"If I want to put some cases to rest, that is," Lestrade muttered and John bit down on a smile at the sarcasm and weariness in the DI's voice. He heard Lestrade sigh and looked up, watching as the DI turned away from Sherlock for a moment.

"Right, can we have some order here, please? Everyone back off! Back off! You! Constable! Whatever your name is! Call this in and get some traffic control going! Donovan! Is there an ambulance on the way? Good! Hillary, make yourself useful other than being a plant and see to the bus passengers! You three, what are you gawking at! There must be a cruiser around here with some police tape, or something! Move the crowds back!"

He turned back to John and Sherlock.

"And you two! Don't think I'm letting you off the hook. When it comes down on me, I'm pulling you right into it."

_Like always_ , John thought with a wry smile while Sherlock protested and complained and Lestrade argued. John sat back on his haunches and listened with half an ear, then got up to help with the mangled body when the ambulance finally arrived through the crowd.

* * *

_Lestrade was right_ , Sherlock thought. This _was_ too much bloody paperwork. He'd forgotten about that. It had been the same when he'd shot Moriarty. Well, perhaps that had been slightly worse, because in this case, the – ahem – victim had thrown himself in front of a bus.

_Hardly my fault_ , Sherlock thought with an inward scowl, but try telling that to the Crown Prosecutors, who wanted someone to take the blame. Why not the corpse? It was simple, accurate, and let absolutely everyone else off the hook to return to their lives and important things, such as not dealing with lawyers.

He fiddled with the idea of ringing Mycroft and having some expensive lawyers of his own sent around. But no, his brother would only want to _interfere_ and probably call their mother. Although Sherlock would actually enjoy seeing her again, since the last time he'd seen her, he'd been rather poorly. He did remember her coming to see him, but it was hazy, not quite so much as most of the other events from that time, but not the pleasant visit it could have been.

He resolved to take John up to the manor once this had all been sorted out and have a quiet weekend in the country. It would make him appreciate the city all the much more when he returned, too. And he did miss playing violin with her. John enjoyed listening to both of them, too.

He met Sam going into Scotland Yard and the younger man appraised him approvingly.

"You look better," he said.

"I am," Sherlock replied. "Come to listen to Lestrade reprimand me a bit more? Or to add Interpol's contribution?"

Sam snorted derisively.

"Hardly," he said. "Interpol's well out of this. Not much you can do to prosecute someone in two different countries when he's a corpse. Not even a very pretty one, I might add. I'm supposed to meet with the brass about some weapons smuggling problems between here and France and Germany. Not that you should know that."

"Ah, liaising," Sherlock said.

"That _is_ my job," Sam replied. "Although, I will probably have do some work on getting some of the departments across the country and in Wales and Scotland to talk to one another about the Bainbridge cases. There was a lot in his flat, Sherlock. A lot to track down."

"Hmm," Sherlock said noncommittally. "I suspected as much."

"I'm sure you did," Sam said, opening one of the main doors and letting Sherlock in. The detective slipped his hands into his coat pockets and nodded, then remembered something.

"Oh," he said, pulling out the two fliers he'd taken several days ago and had left carefully folded in his pocket. "I've these for you."

"What is it?" Sam asked.

"Advertisements for local shows in the area," Sherlock said. "Given your taste in music, I thought perhaps you'd like to take Sandra. And it's quite safe now that no couples-murderers are running about loose."

Sam rolled his eyes at the last commented but unfolded the fliers, looking surprised, then grinned, shaking his head and looked up.

"Thanks," he said, folding them again and slipping them into his own pocket. "I might just do that."

Sherlock grinned back, falling into step beside Sam as they entered the building.

* * *

"Look, how many more times do I have to tell you?" Sherlock snapped.

"It's not me, Sherlock. It's everyone above me."

"But he'd dead. What difference does it make?"

"It's _because_ he's dead that it's such a process! I did warn you, didn't I? Besides, you know this from last time."

"You're acting like I pulled a gun on him."

"No, I'm very lucky you didn't," Lestrade sighed, folding his hands on his desk. "So are you."

He gave Sherlock one of his world-weary detective looks, which Sherlock ignored completely. He saw these so often he suspected they were Lestrade's default expressions.

"You're a police officer," Sherlock said, leaning back somewhat in his chair, sitting his right knee crossed over his left, tapping his right foot absently and impatiently in the air. "Can't you make this all just disappear?"

"This _is_ me making it disappear," Lestrade said. "Believe me, it would be much worse for you without me."

"I can hardly see how," Sherlock commented.

"No, you can't. And you're lucky you can't. Another thing–"

He was cut off by his mobile phone ringing and he fished it out of his desk drawer, frowning at the number.

"It's your artist friend, Holly Adams," he said, turning the phone on, putting it on speaker.

Sherlock grinned.

He did so enjoy being right.

"DI Lestrade," Lestrade answered.

"Oh, Inspector? It's Holly Adams, I did the sketch for that killer you caught last week?"

Lestrade shot a pointed look at Sherlock over the 'caught' comment and Sherlock rolled his eyes in response.

"Yes, Holly, I remember you. Is everything all right? You've not been having any problems with the media, have you? We don't release our artists' names."

"No, no, nothing like that," the girl said, then hesitated and Sherlock grinned again, raising his eyebrows at Lestrade's puzzled and suspicious look. "I was just wondering– I know you must be really busy and all, but I was wondering if you had some time to meet with me? I wanted to ask you about what I have to do to become a full-time forensics artist."


End file.
